


Marvin's Brothers

by beerecordings



Category: jacksepticeye egos - Fandom
Genre: Brotherhood, But he might have a couple soft spots..., Henrik is sassy and we love him, Marvin is grumpy, Narrator makes comments, No trigger warnings for first chapter, Originally Posted on Tumblr, See chapter notes for all trigger warnings, Stabbing and blood in chapter two, Third chapter deals heavily with Chase's depression and attempt on his life, Trigger warning tags added as I go, and then from there it's ALL about Jamie hahaha, but damn they love their little brother, do not copy to another site
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-24
Updated: 2020-07-14
Packaged: 2021-03-03 21:20:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 37,422
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24902239
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beerecordings/pseuds/beerecordings
Summary: Marvin is cold as ice. He doesn't need anyone, he doesn't want anyone, and he isn't looking for friends or family, thank you very much. Don't let anyone tell you differently, especially not his brothers. He hates them, seriously. Okay, maybe not hate. That's a strong word. Maybe he's starting to thaw out. Maybe he's starting to lose piece after piece of his heart to the family that Jack gives him. Maybe it's worth the risk of getting your heart broken to love somebody.In other words - Marvin hates all of his brothers. Until the day he doesn't.
Comments: 19
Kudos: 42





	1. Big Brother

He’s spent his whole life being called cold.

Irritation is his most reliable emotion. It is not uncommon to see him burning a quiet fire in the corner, blue flames warning of a temper rising like lava in the throat of a nauseous volcano. His mouth is rarely open without voice first being sharpened, as a blade against a whetstone, and he’s never done much to keep it sheathed.

And why not? Words are weapons. You use them to protect yourself.

Marvin protects himself. He protects himself. He isn’t about to let anybody hurt him. He doesn’t want anybody to hurt him. That’s the first priority. That has to be the first priority.

He doesn’t want anybody to hurt him.

So the word “cold” is brushed off his shoulder with hands warmed by fire and rage, and he pretends, that out of all the options he has, this is the best one.

Better than being naive. Better than being stupid. Better than being – his hands curl up with terror and anger and he snaps his teeth – better than being goddamn weak.

No, no, he isn’t weak. He isn’t weak. He’s cold. He’s cold.

He spends his life trying to stay frozen over.

And his brothers?

His brothers are air dryers.

Annoying, loud, probably not the best tool for the job, but trying, trying, nevertheless, to melt away at the iceberg.

—————————–

“You suck at this,” he says, leaning over the edge of the building.

“Well,” pants Jackie, clinging to the brick, his feet perched precariously on a rotting windowsill. “At least you’re honest.”

He readjusts with a groan, pulling his body up, up. His bold feet leave the sill and dig into red brick. Marvin quells a flame of fear in his stomach and stands back, glaring at Jackie, pissed that he made him worry.

“Just let me help you up,” he snaps. “This is pointless.”

“Just give me a moment,” laughs Jackie. “It’s okay.”

It’s really not. His whole body is trembling with the effort and pain has become a focal point, an even bigger motivator than his original desire to prove to himself that he can climb like this without Marvin’s help. Just get to the top of the building and it will stop hurting. Just get to the top of the building and everything will be okay. Just get to the top of the building or something bad will happen.

He moves up again, grateful that Marvin cannot see the blood on his hands through red gloves.

“I’m not going to just sit here and watch you,” snarls Marvin. “I have better things to do.”

“Like what?” laughs Jackie. “What do you ever do?”

Marvin grits his teeth. “Don’t make fun of me.”

Jackie’s tone softens. “I’m not,” he says. “But to be fair you and I – ”

And his foot slips.

He screeches, in a way that would be funny if he weren’t in real danger, and his whole body gives a sort of desperate spasm before gravity puts it back in its place sends him plummeting toward the ground like a Disney villain tripping over a conveniently dangerous precipice.

Family has never come easy for Marvin.

Or it feels that way most days, but for his part he does not so much as call out Jackie’s name before his body moves, thoughtless; his feet are over the edge of the building without a single trace of fear or panic from him, and he falls after his brother as if he was made to do it, as if he was made to follow Jackie to whatever end, effortlessly, easily.

He catches him out of the air in a truly impressive sweep of his body – or it would be impressive, if you knew anything about how hard it is to fly when your whole body is stuffed full of meat and calcium; birds are so light and hollow and Marvin is jealous and Jackie tries his best to listen when he talks about aerodynamics, but he can’t stay focused for long – and the two of them hover, not far from the ground, Jackie buried in Marvin’s shoulder, panting hard.

“Oh,” he whispers. “Oh, oh, oh, shit.”

It is rare to see him truly afraid.

And for some reason, it pauses Marvin – if him falling from the sky did not pause him, this does, this reminder that Jackie – Jackie who is always sweet and warm and kind and so easily so many of the things Marvin is not and doesn’t believe that he can be and beats himself for failing at – Jackie is just mortal too, just as much meat and calcium and zipping chemical reactions taking place in the big slimy grey organs they call brains.

“You’re stupid,” Marvin thinks about saying, but he doesn’t, and Jackie just holds onto him, until at last Marvin sinks towards the earth, and returns their feet to solid ground, and they are both alright.

“Thanks, bro,” mumbles Jackie, pulling cautiously away, his expression downcast.

Marvin sighs through his nose and lets his eyes slide shut in a rare show of trust, accepting the proffered affection.

“I’m glad you’re okay,” he says, and sees from the light that returns to Jackie’s eyes that this is the correct answer – not scolding or fear or rejection, but a very quiet warmth, the only kind he has ever had the strength to offer.

He and Jackie are not alike, but they can understand each other still.

Jackie will still want him even if he’s sometimes cold, even if he’s sometimes stormy, even if he sits for days pouring across books of obscure poetry or sciences or history that no one else in the world seems to care about or if he is an asteroid, painful to the touch and far away, even if he is a bird in the air, distant and passive and uncaring in its yellowed gaze –

Jackie always forgives him, even when he doesn’t forgive himself.

He and Marvin make a family of two, and even if Marvin still fears the day that Jackie will no longer want him, he finds a warm contentment in the fraternity they share.  
\------------

Henrik fucks it all up, though.


	2. Henrik Fucks It All Up

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jack is a character in this fic, there is blood, stabbing, and stitching in this chapter, and the author loves making LISTS

“Stop glaring,” says Jackie.

Marvin’s mouth curls up and he narrows his gaze so far Jackie isn’t sure his eyes are open. Scowling himself now, Jackie nudges him – okay, it’s a little rougher than a nudge – Jackie punches him in the arm, and then Marvin turns and hisses back, and Jackie snaps a couple sharp words, and then they are both whisper-fighting violently in the hallway, exchanging snippy little snarls and biting their teeth at each other –

“Guys,” calls Jack.

They straighten up, coughing, and turn away from each other.

Jack rolls his eyes and shuts the door behind him, heading towards them from the other side of the hallway. His right eye is still bright green and he is tired, worn white from creation. This is no cheap magic and it takes a toll. Marvin’s anger pauses to let concern worm its way up his chest, and he reaches out to brush his fingers against Jack’s, tilting his head gently up at him.

“How’s he doing?” asks Jackie.

“Taking it pretty well,” Jack nods, worrying at his lip, rubbing his index finger across the back of Marvin’s hand. “Why you’re annoyed, Marv?”

Marvin draws back, and the embarrassment he feels for the transparency of his emotions translates directly and immediately into even more irritability.

“I’m not,” he snaps, tilting up his chin. “I just don’t see why we need another brother. Or why you couldn’t have at least warned us. I would have liked a heads up that someone new is apparently living with me now, as if this house isn’t loud enough already – ”

“Marvin!” Jackie chides. “There’s only two of us here! How could you not be excited about a new little brother?”

“Jackie.” Jack cuts him off before he can get started. He moves back into Marvin’s space and sets a careful hand on the shoulder of his magician, looking into Marvin’s eyes until, at last, Marvin looks back, glowering all the time.

But Jack’s gaze is soft and exhausted, and Marvin feels himself melt, if only for a moment, if only to hear the truth in the words that he gives him next.

“I need him,” says Jack. “I need him.”

It’s funny. At the time, Marvin takes this to mean that his paranoia is worsening, and that, in his anguish and hallucinations, he has decided he needs a medic on hand to care for him and his two other boys. What Marvin hears is “I need a doctor.”

But this is not what Jack says and it is not what Jack means.

———————————–

Dinner is quiet.

They were all too tired to cook, so they have pizza and breadsticks with as much garlic as Jackie could convince Domino’s to add, sitting around the table like war generals trying to make small talk after a defeat. Jack is so tired he eventually just puts his head down on the table and eats tilted sideways, tearing chunks off his pizza and shoving them in his mouth.

And the newcomer sits on the other side of the table, very small with his shoulders tucked in, very small with the bigness of the world.

He had shouted for the first three hours. Throwing shit and slamming his shoulder against the door until Jackie could calm him down. What is there to tell him? Explanations sound like nonsense in any form or language, but they are truth, and there is nothing else for him to believe right now. Marvin knows. He remembers. It had just made him angry.

No parents, no hometown, no history, no culture. Just an image of the world he’d never walked in and a stranger meant to be his brother. And Jack. But Jack was always the eye of Marvin’s hurricane. Quiet. Steady. The storm is raging everywhere but here. Marvin’s hand drifts across his skull warmly. Jack might be asleep. Or he’s just chewing that breadstick very, very slowly, a faint green light still glowing beneath his eye.

“What’s your name?” asks Jackie. “It was long.”

The newcomer stares down at his pizza. He’s picked the pepperoni off of it and Marvin knows that if he asked him why he did so, he would not be able to say.

“Henrik,” he says roughly, pushing his glasses – Jack’s glasses – up on his nose. “Von Schneeplestein.”

“Cool,” says Jackie, low and reverent, and he means it. Marvin rolls his eyes.

“He’s German,” mumbles Jack sleepily.

“That’s cool.” Jackie beams at Henrik. “Awesome, man, yeah. We’re going to figure all this out, okay? You and me, we’re brothers now. Hey, come on, eat something, okay?”

“Okay,” whispers Henrik, and when Jackie picks the pepperoni off the next piece of pizza before pushing it towards him, he gives him a very small smile.

Marvin is an iceberg. His hands are on fire.

“I’m putting Jack to bed,” he says, getting up abruptly enough that his paper plate flips, and crumbs of bread and garlic flutter across the table and the floor and dust Jack’s nose, making him sneeze. He gets up when Marvin reaches out to help him and lets himself be manhandled into Marvin’s room to stay the night. Apparently the guest room is no longer a guest room, and Marvin wants to look after him himself.

“Marv,” chuckles Jack, half-swaddled in his sheets. “You don’t have to be scared about him or anything, okay?”

Marvin gives a little grumble like a cat left outside and curls up on the windowsill to guard him.

“I guess I’ll let him stay,” he agrees after a begrudging moment. “Your dumb ass created him, so… how bad could he be?”

At the time, the question seemed innocent enough, and Marvin, for all his suspicion and annoyance, still did not imagine anything like what came to be. Jack was small in his bed and he had never done anything to hurt anyone and Marvin was sure it would always be that way. He would make it so. He would protect him. Protect Jackie.

But Henrik?

Oh, fuck that guy.

————————–

“You don’t like me,” says Henrik.

Marvin stops eating sushi and sits back in his chair, staring across the table at him.

Henrik places another crunch roll with wasabi in his mouth and chews thoroughly, wiping at his mouth with a napkin.

“What?” says Marvin flatly.

Henrik swallows. “You don’t like me.”

He picks up another piece between his chopsticks.

Marvin mimics him and picks up a slice of California roll, swallowing back a sudden dryness in his throat.

“So,” he says. “What if I don’t?”

Henrik’s seventeen days old. Here are four things Marvin has learned about him in that time.

1\. He is either a good doctor or an insane egomaniac.

2\. His memory is worse than an actual child’s and he is constantly confused – and yet, somehow, still knife-sharp.

3\. He is more ferocious than a dog in a wire trap and he will bite if harassed.

4\. And, most damning of all, he and Jackie get along very, very, very well.

No, Marvin doesn’t like him.

Jack doesn’t need him and neither does Jackie and I’m supposed to be the one keeping them both safe and I’m the little brother and I don’t see why he’s here and I don’t want him and I don’t like him, I don’t like him, I don’t like him.

“Oh, nothing, I suppose,” says Henrik, flipping his roll over, bored. “Just a pity for you.”

Marvin puts his piece of sushi in his mouth and nearly chokes on it – it’s slightly too large to chew comfortably.

“Warum das?” he manages, when he has swallowed, his cheeks lightly red and his tone biting. “Huh? Why is that, ‘little brother?'”

Henrik shrugs and pushes the rest of his little grocery box of sushi towards him, wiping at his mouth again, biting back the sharp taste of wasabi with a smile.

“It’s just really going to suck ass for you,” he says cheerily, getting up from his chair. “When you have to come begging to the good doctor for help.”

And he is gone before Marvin can splutter out a reply.

———————

Blood pours out of Marvin’s leg like a waterfall.

“Hmmm,” he says, tilting his head back and forth at it. “Hm.”

“Motherfuck! Holy fucking shit! Son of a bitch! Fucking what the fuck? Hell! Hell!”

“Are you going to do something?” Marvin snaps at the man who stabbed him, watching him prance in a panicked dance around the alleyway, Marvin’s wallet abandoned on the cold stone between them. “Why the fucking leg?”

“I don’t know, man, I panicked, okay! Motherfuck! I didn’t – I wasn’t really going to stab you, I – You’re the one with the freaky fucking lights, man, with the fire, what the fuck! Fuck! I didn’t – ”

“Call for help,” says Marvin, narrowing his gaze at him. “Or get the fuck out of here.”

“I didn’t… the cops don’t… fuck’s sake,” says the man, as crimson floods black and red into the stones beneath Marvin’s legs, and then he is gone, racing down the alleyway.

“This is really fun,” says Marvin to him, staring at his leg as the blood gushes out. “What a super end to the day.”

He tries to move and his composure breaks; he bites back on a howl and throws his head back, gasping for hallowed air. Pain! He can feel the wound squealch and shift! Blood slicks his pants and he gropes desperately at the wound, but trying to put pressure on it is so painful it takes him a long time before he can force his shaking hands to clasp it down. Hold back the floodtides, Marv.

He needs to call Jackie. Where’s his phone? Fuck, but no – he and Jack are at some stupid concert. Embittered by the fear of it, he tries to call him anyway, but all he gets is his brother’s stupid voicemail, which is just Jackie going “wait, is it recording?” and then the message tone. He lets the phone clatter to the ground.

He could just call an ambulance, but he avoids hospitals on account of having a permanent internal temperature of about 110 degrees F, which earns him enough panicked racing around the ER for a lifetime. It’s just his magic.

“You still feel like one dry ice motherfucker to me,” Henrik had sniped at him once, his blue eyes flashing behind the glasses he stole from Jack, and Marvin had just glared back, flipping a knife between his fingers, not that that ever intimidated the bratty little asshole.

Henrik. That’s the person he should be calling. He’s a doctor. Sort of. He stitches Jackie up passably. This is the one thing Marvin appreciates about him. The sound of his yelling downstairs at three in the morning is the sound of a suitably chastised and well-looked after Jackieboy the next morning, not to mention the sound of Marvin turning over in bed and letting him handle it. He’s glad no one expects him to look after Jackie when he’s injured anymore. He’s glad he was never made to admit how much those nights would scare him. Even now, the blood is almost overwhelming, and he can feel himself trembling as it fountains out of him, one thin line of it splurting out in time with his heart.

He should call Henrik.

But he’d be so smug about it!

Marvin is already rolling his eyes at the thought of it. “Oh, do you need somebody to clean you up, Katze?”

“Shut up, Henrik.”

He’d get reprimanded just like Jackie gets reprimanded. He can see Henrik’s finger waving in his face, hear the sharp retort of his tongue like a second knife. The thought of the humiliation of it makes him even more scared than he is now. He stares down at the blood pouring out of his leg.

He needs help, right?

“No,” he says aloud, putting down pressure one more time. “You know what?”

He’s got this. He’s a sorcerer and an adult and he’s older than his smirking little white-coated snob of a brother. He can take care of himself. Honestly, he doesn’t even need to bother Jackie. Screw it. Marvin lets Jackie stick around, and Jack too, but in the end?

He doesn’t need anybody else.

And he squeezes his fingers tightly down around the hot soaked meat of his thigh and he cauterizes his own stab wound back together.

Four minutes of screaming. Ten minutes of unconsciousness. Fifteen minutes for an Uber to arrive and take him back home. Thank God for the elevator, they’re five stories up. Even then, it takes him a good twenty minutes just to limp down the hall.

Thump. Thump. Thump. Tired feet across the floor. His hand dragging against the wall. A wave of dizziness. Blood-soaked pants. Neighbors shouting. A strange smell. He hates this apartment building. Feels too much like old times. It’s not just him and Jackie anymore and he doesn’t want to pretend it is. They need to find a good place. Two minutes to unlock the door with his trembling fingers.

But all of it is worth it for the look on Henrik’s face.

He’s asleep on the couch, drifted off with his mouth hanging open in the middle of some animal documentary. Two weeks ago he made a wild hacking at his poison-dart-frog-hair and now he’s got a messy head of short, mostly brown hair springing up out of his skull. The light of the tv leaves him milk white and dreamily pretty without the wilderness that usually shines from his face like a raccoon that’s found a hamburger. Crazy little man. The door shuts behind Marvin and Henrik starts awake, rubbing at his eyes, and looks up.

A bowl of chip crumbs slides out of his lap. His mouth never does get closed. His eyes are moon-sized.

“M-Marvin?” he manages, swallowing. “Okay, okay – just let me get my bag, sit down on the tub and I’ll – ”

“No need,” interrupts Marvin smoothly, turning towards his bedroom. “I’ve got it handled.”

“You’ve…?” Henrik stares at his blood-soaked pants, his mind hooked numbly on the image of the huge black burn wound in his brother’s thigh. “Are – are you – ”

“Yes,” says Marvin, turning to give him a cold smile. “I’m sure.”

He leaves Henrik alone on the couch. He bandages and disinfects his own leg, takes a painkiller, and sleeps for almost twenty hours straight. Henrik must try to bother him a few times during the night, because he wakes with his bandages disturbed and a big bottle of water on his bedside table, but there’s nothing more the doctor needs to do with the wound sealed.

He’s in so much pain his head is light, but he still feels victorious. So much for needing your help, smug little bastard.

———————————

Crying from two doors down.

“I don’t want to be a veterinarian, I am a surgeon, I want to be a surgeon, at a real hospital!”

“They sent you back too, Schneep?”

“No one wants a surgeon without references, without connections, who goes through medical school, residency, and five years of experience without a reference?”

“I can have Jackie forge you one of those too. Schneep – ”

“No, no, it won’t work, there’s no one to call! No one to talk about my work, no published papers, no record of me in news, no nothing, nothing, no one is going to want me.”

“We can start building you some references here if you want to start small, right?”

“It doesn’t matter. I can’t keep getting rejected, I hate this. I’m a shitty pretend doctor anyway.”

“That’s not true.”

Jack’s voice low and pleading.

“That’s not true. That’s not what I made you. Not really.”

“Even my own brothers ignore me. Jackie doesn’t listen to anything I tell him, just goes running out to get hurt again the next night, and Marvin would rather burn himself back together than come to a fraud like me!”

“Henrik, shit, man, come on, come here, bud… It’s okay, Schneep… I’m going to figure this out for you, okay? I will.”

“I’m so tired of nobody wanting me!”

“I want you. I want you. Come here, yeah. It’s okay, let it out.”

Marvin steps back from the door. His hand is on it, but he never goes in.

Maybe it wasn’t worth the look on his face after all.

——————————————

He and Henrik don’t speak of it again. They pass each other by in the hallway. It’s not that they’re on hateful terms – they get on fine, with irritation moment to moment, but they’re not brothers. Sometimes Marvin feels bad about it, but only when Jack is watching.

Jackie stands in the middle of their battlefield, trying to lure them in with occasional garlic bread and non-pepperoni pizza. Sometimes it works. Marvin learns more about Henrik.

1\. He wants the thermostat at 19 C exactly.

2\. He buys Jackie yogurt-covered raisins at random, as far as Marvin can tell, or maybe just when he’s feeling particularly fond.

3\. He will make you celebrate Passover with him and you will enjoy it.

4\. Nothing scares him in the whole fucking world. Except that one spider that got into his room and made him scream for almost an hour and cling to Jackie’s sweatshirt like a baby. Tough as nails. Fuck that spider though.

5\. He can concentrate on ONE thing at a time or be distracted by everything in the whole world. He is just as jumpy as Jackie some days. His memory is perfect for things he’s read.

6\. There’s a kindness to him. There is a great kindness to him. Marvin sees it, moment to moment. Soft discussions with the people asking for money on the street. A quiet obsession with immigration reform. Blood donated every six weeks and hours spent organizing boxes for the soup kitchen. The way he speaks, even when he’s yelling. A goodness. But this is a secret.

7\. He will never know everything about him. He is an enigma to him. There’s something fun about that. Wild Henrik.

(Jackie often makes admirable attempts to bring them together, bribing them from either side of the battlefield with garlic breadsticks or sci-fi fantasy movies. Sometimes it even works. Marvin and Henrik sit side by side on the couch and toss popcorn at each other. Joke about people they don’t like. Joke about Jackie, whom they do like, and cause him to make indignant noises. Exchange random German phrases in the hallway as Marvin picks the language up. Sometimes they laugh at each other’s jokes. They live together. Share a coffee pot, Henrik’s sacred place of worship. Most of the time they’re okay.)

They’re brothers, Marvin supposes. But only literally. Never in heart. Until, of course, the day Jack bleeds.

—————————————

“Jack,” says Marvin.

He doesn’t look at him. His leg is bouncing. He stares out the window, his palm spread wide to soothe his thigh. Back and forth, back and forth.

“Jack,” repeats Marvin.

“What?” asks Jack weakly.

“Hey. Look at me. You’re safe.”

Jack is staring out the window.

“Jack?”

He is dark with exhaustion. One eye is green.

Marvin turns to Henrik. “You have to do something about this. You’re supposed to be a doctor.”

“I’m not this kind of doctor,” says Henrik. “He should be seeing a psychiatrist.”

But his paranoia is so high he barely trusts even them these days.

“This can’t go on,” mumbles Marvin.

Jack’s body gives a slight heave. He glances over at them, alarmed, and his nose begins to bleed almost nonchalantly. He sits still as Henrik and Marvin both get tissues and begin mopping up the blood, pinning down his nostrils, trying to fix what’s wrong.

But Marvin knows what rampant magic looks like, and Henrik knows the signs of a total breakdown, and Jackie is watching the internet, where a name once whispered grows stronger and stronger, pressing deep into Jack’s powerful mind: Anti. Anti. Anti.

“You’re safe,” repeats Marvin. “You’re in control. If you don’t want to create him, you won’t. Sometimes I feel fire well up beneath my hands, but when it comes down to it, I can control it. You’ll be able to do the same. Okay?”

But their magic isn’t the same, and Anti is not as helpless as fire. Anti is a parasite.

Jack nods even though he doesn’t believe him, and looks up at the two of them, and they whisper reassurances to him with the curtains drawn.

“You’re safe. You’re safe. You’re safe.”

Looking across at each other, they see in the other’s eyes a twin determination: we will not let harm come to him. Not today. Not now. Not ever. Henrik. Marvin. I need him.

But reader, you know what happens after that.

———————————

He doesn’t know when he started hugging Henrik.

He knows Jack is lying on the bed in front of them, white as the bandages around his throat. He knows Jackie had, at some point, run outside to kick bins around and scream and maybe find some asshole to beat up. He knows Anti is already gone, and already real, and already ahead of them by a great many steps.

And somewhere in there, he started hugging Henrik, and now here they are, wrapped around each other, so tight they can feel each other’s bones firm beneath their hands, beneath their chins, against their chests.

Henrik is slicked in Jack’s blood but it doesn’t matter. They’ll clean up now that Jack is stable. Once they manage to disentangle themselves. Henrik has his knees drawn up to his chest and his head down and Marvin is squishing him like a roly-poly, pressing him tight to his heart, clutching him. Henrik is wrapped around his ribs and buried in his chest and neither of them have moved for a long time.

He doesn’t know how long they stay there like that.

He just knows what it is to need him, afterwards.

—————————-

(It doesn’t suck as much as Henrik said it would, but he still teases him gently sometimes when he needs a hug, and Marvin tugs on his hair or pinches him, and they are becoming accustomed to both brotherhood and grief. Here is one thing Henrik learns about Marvin: there is a great fire beneath the ice, if you chip down far enough, and he is always warm to the touch. Someday, if you work long enough, you might hear him call you little brother and mean it. And if there are things to be admitted, it’s this: it’s hard to hate yourself or think you’re not worth all this trouble when someone as frosty as Marvin is letting you curl up against his chest and be still.)


	3. Stella Amata

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alternatively titled: Chase does NOT fuck it all up because Marvin has one hell of a soft spot  
> Triggers in this for Chase's suicide attempt and hospitalization afterwards, as well as mentions of alcoholism, attempted self-harm, and discussions about depression and suicidal impulses. Marvin also watches Henrik perform surgery and it's a little graphic.  
> Amata means beloved!

“Are you okay?” everyone is always asking Jack after that.  
For the first few days he can just squeeze hands once for yes, twice for no, but even then, with his throat still weeping on his neck, he mostly squeezes once. Jackie can’t stop crying every time he comes in to see him and Marvin always watches for the moment where Jack’s eyes become glazed with frustration and pain and helplessness to comfort him before he takes his big brother by the shoulders and leads him gently away so Jack can go back to sleep.  
“Everyone will notice the scar,” he whispers in a voice nearly severed, the first time Henrik takes off his bandages and lets him have a mirror.  
“I’ll fix that,” says Marvin, very quietly, beside him, and he does. The scar fades away between his and Henrik’s ministrations. Usually Marvin would get an earful from Jackie about how we can’t just make scars magically disappear and expect the problems underneath to be fixed, but they all know this is something that has to be kept private, something Jack deserves to be able to keep private. Jack looks up at Marvin like he loves him and lets him touch his wounded throat without fear.  
Marvin tries not to be too proud about it. He’s always had a weak spot for him, damn him. He stays often by his side and watches the people who are allowed to know – and even the people who aren’t, but still notice something’s off – ask him again and again:  
Are you okay? Is everything alright? You should get some sleep. You should see a doctor. You should take it easy.  
Jack always squeezes once, but the light in his eyes tells Marvin something different. Most of the cheerfulness has dissipated off of him, like the sun has dried the mist away and left him stiff and wilting. Marvin’s not a fucking baby, so he doesn’t say shit like “it breaks my fucking heart to see you like this,” but sometimes he thinks it, watching Jack from the corner.  
He wants to do something. He doesn’t know what. “Are you okay? Are you okay?” Jack squeezes everyone’s hand once. Marvin never asks.  
He finds him alone in his recording room late, late, late, two months after Anti came and hurt him and then disappeared again.  
“It’s late,” says Marvin.  
Jack is slumped over his desk, his head in his hands.  
Marvin comes up and fills his palm with the touch of him, resting on his shoulder. When Jack doesn’t answer, he kneels down beside him and lays his head down against Jack’s thigh, staring up at him.  
Jack touches his hair.  
No one else gets to see Marvin like this.  
For you, I allow it, Marvin thinks, and for a long time, Jack threads his fingers through his hair, in silence, in the dark, at four in the morning, and Marvin holds his other hand while he breathes low and shaky, but does not cry.  
He regains control eventually, but still, he only whispers when he speaks.  
“I’m never using my power again,” he says.  
And Marvin figures this is both a wise decision and a foolish promise to make, because he realizes now that Jack is not like him, and there are some drives that move you too much to stay standing still forever. Jack is a creator first and foremost. It is too much power for any one person to have to carry, and he never asked for it, and he doesn’t mean to use it, and he didn’t ever mean to create any pain or any suffering, but he’s made mistakes and they can’t go back now.  
“I’m never letting it control me again,” he says.  
Marvin squeezes his hand once.  
“I’m here,” he says.  
He’ll help him with anything he asks for. He and Jackie and Henrik – they can be everything Jack needs.  
—————————  
The idea of Chase gets a hold on Jack four months later.  
He tells no one.  
He will never create him.  
He promises.  
(It’s too late from the first moment the idea of him appears in Jack’s mind. Creation is a snare to him. Once the idea is formed in his head, once the character appears before him, he can’t let them go. He can’t let it go at all. Still he refuses. Not only would he most likely lose control like he always does, but he knows it would be cruel, because as Chase forms in his mind Jack realizes that, against his best wishes, his place in the story is not a happy one, and he doesn’t want to create someone cursed to be miserable. When the day finally comes that he loses control, he tries to over-compensate by making Chase happy as starshine and enthusiastic as a grasshopper.)  
It isn’t enough.  
———————–  
“No, not this,” he sees Jack’s mouth whisper.  
Jackie and Henrik’s shouting is all just background noise. He can’t look at the body. He doesn’t want to see it. The blood. The life going out of him. No, not this.  
He’s kneeling down at Jack’s side before the world has made any sense. He’s watching himself like a third person adventure game in the inciting incident segment of the story.  
“Hurt?” he hears his character ask. Its voice is low and shaky.  
Jack clutches at his untouched skull. But his eyes are fixed on the other man on the ground, and he does not answer Marvin, just whispers, with dazed, moth-wing eyes:  
“I didn’t mean this.”  
Reader, here are the stages of creation:  
1\. Just Jack.  
2\. Jack and an idea.  
3\. Oh, fuck, it won’t let go, it won’t let go, I can’t stop thinking, I can’t stop thinking about them, the idea will not leave me, the idea is a presence, I am being consumed, I am being consumed, I am being –  
4\. Jack and a second consciousness watching. Jack in control. (At this point you will want a camera and, if possible, spectators. Belief is a powerful thing.)  
5\. A second consciousness and Jack. One console. Two controllers.  
6\. A second consciousness and Jack watching. The second consciousness in control. (Usually, but not always, willingly handed over.)  
7\. Two consciousnesses. Two bodies. Mitosis complete. Or meiosis? Marvin doesn’t remember the difference. Ask Henrik. It’s good to have a Henrik around for situations like this. I need him.  
And Chase – blinking into existence – stunned and in pain – clutching a gun that wasn’t dangerous until the thought crossed Jack’s mind that it could be –  
Chase shot himself somewhere between stages six and seven.  
Marvin cannot look over. Marvin cannot look over at him. No. Not this.  
“Will he die?” Jack gasps, his chest sobbing for air, his pupils blown with panic and one iris shining fire green.  
“I don’t know,” says Marvin. “I don’t know.”  
Henrik and Jackie are yelling so loudly he can’t hear them anymore. He thinks there’s an ambulance coming.  
“No, no, no,” Jack tries to drag himself up and then crumples again. Marvin grabs him by the shoulders. “I have to fix it. This is my fault.”  
“Jack, he’s separate from you. There’s nothing you can do now.”  
“Camera,” chokes Jack. “Get my camera.”  
“What? During all this? Jack – ”  
“Get my camera!” screams Jack, out-shouting both Jackie and Henrik, and Marvin swears vehemently and goes to pick the stupid thing up.  
“What do you want me to do?”  
“They have to know he survives it,” says Jack, slumping back on the ground. “Put the cap on me and then film my eyes opening.”  
Marvin curses the whole time he’s doing it, but he does. By the time he sees Jack’s blue eyes sliding open, there’s an ambulance here, and after that he’s so numb he can’t do much but shy away in the corner with Jack in his arms. His exhaustion makes him delirious and all he can do is cling to Marvin’s arm or scrabble at the blood-stained carpet and repeat things like “I didn’t mean for this to happen” and “I’m really sorry” and “Marvin, you have to look after him, you have to protect him, you have to keep him alive, Marvin, Marvin, Marvin – ”  
“I will, okay? I will, I promise.”  
“You’ll look after him?”  
“Yes, I will. Promise. Promise.”  
“Promise,” repeats Jack, his eyes fluttering. “You’ll look after him. Marvin will… Chase…”  
He is dead weight in Marvin’s arms.  
“Yes,” says Marvin again, and everything has gone quiet and cold and dark. “Yes, I promise.”  
He will look after Chase.  
————————  
NOPE, never mind, fuck this shit, Chase can fend for himself, hospitals fucking SUCK, why the hell did his dumb ass ask to be in the gallery during the surgery? Needles! Small knives! The blood! The blood! FUCK. He looks just like a little corpse! The open skull wound! The horrible weeping of the crimson water! A tube shoved down his throat to let him breathe! Marvin is gagging and Marvin is crying and maybe he just needed to feel like he could do something, anything, anything to help, but he can’t, not right now, he can just watch as some surgeon who’s not even Henrik works on the body below him, and he should have known he was already too shaken up by Jack’s fear to come anywhere close to this, anywhere close to this, what was he thinking, what was he –  
The strong braids of Jackie’s arms wrap tightly around him before he’s registered his brother coming up behind him and they are sinking to the floor of the gallery, their bodies locked in together, and Jackie – Jackie who knows him, better than anyone, Jackie who knows exactly what to do – Jackie just fucking holds him.  
“I don’t want this to keep happening!” he screams.  
“I know. I know.”  
“I don’t want him! I don’t want Jack to keep getting hurt!”  
“It’s not his fault.”  
“I don’t want someone new in my family again! I don’t want someone new for Jack to be afraid for! And I definitely don’t want – I can’t, Jackie, I can’t! – watch my little brother die without ever even getting to see his eyes open!”  
Jackie holds him so tight his back cracks. Marvin’s skull digs against Jackie’s shoulder. The bones of Jackie’s wrists meet Marvin’s ribs. Solidity. Strength. Comfort, if you can let yourself have it. If you can admit that you need it. Marvin squeezes Jackie’s wrists and sinks back against him, panting.  
“It’s not fair,” he says. “Not for Jack. Not for us. Not for anyone. Shit like this is what made Anti what he is, Jackie.”  
A soft breath falls from Jackie’s mouth, but he doesn’t reply, not for a long time, and they do not speak of Anti.  
“Listen,” says Jackie, his forehead pressed into Marvin’s trembling back. “Tomorrow morning, we will get to see him. And not everything will be so scary. And we’ll have a new little brother, and it will be good, even if it was a rough night. We’ll make it good. It doesn’t have to be fair. We’ll take unfairness and still be a family come the morning. We’ll take the unfairness and find a way to be happy anyway. We’ll make it good, Marvin. Give it a little time.”  
But Marvin has never had the strength to be as strong as Jackie is. He doesn’t know where that hope comes from. Moments like these he feels too ugly and shattered to be Jackie’s brother. Even Henrik is a little hero, racing around the hospital where he was finally hired two months back, working triple shifts and twenty-hour surgeries. And Marvin… Marvin is just Marvin.  
There’s nothing he can do. And he doesn’t believe Jackie. Not until the morning comes. Not until the morning comes and proves him right after all.  
Because Chase is –  
Chase is –  
Oh, fuck.  
Marvin cannot begin to put words to what he feels for his little brother from the first moment he sees him in the hospital bed. He can feel his heart striking the inside of his chest and his vision is blurred with the intensity of it.  
“Why the hell are you laughing?” snaps Henrik with some real heat, re-wrapping the bandages that coat Chase’s skull.  
Marvin is laughing because he has no idea what he’s feeling and he’s terrified.  
Because Chase is perfect. And Chase is his. And Chase is tiny in that big hospital bed with his soft white face and his sorrowful mouth and his poor head all swaddled up, and he is identical to Jack in a way that makes Marvin’s heart cry out. Marvin sees in an instant that pierces him like an arrow that here, here, here – here is someone who needs him, who needs him like no one has ever needed him before.  
“Stop laughing!” cries Henrik, shaking with stress. “Stop it, Marvin! This isn’t funny! You can’t be cruel to him like you were to me, I won’t let you!”  
Marvin shakes his head back and forth, trying to cover his mouth, tears welling up in his eyes and it’s stupid, stupid, stupid how strong this feeling is, stupid how horrible he is at expressing this emotion, stupid that all he can do is upset his brothers, stupid how much he needs to keep Chase safe. He feels like Jack put a spell on him when he asked him to protect him, but he doesn’t care. Chase is his. Chase is his. He loves him, he loves him!  
The white fingers twitch. Marvin reaches out to clasp them, engulfing the fragile palm, and when Henrik comes to round the bed, his anger draining away at the sight of Marvin’s distress, it is all Marvin can do to wrap an arm around him too, and hold Henrik close to his chest, where his little brother stands in a numb sort of silence, stunned speechless at the sight of Marvin weeping over Chase’s small, hurting body. Henrik mumbles nothing and puts his head down on Marvin’s, touching his shoulder with his warm, gloved hand.  
Marvin will protect Chase.  
————————–  
“Do you know your name?” asks Jackie softly.  
Chase stares at his bed. Twists his fingers in the sheets.  
“It’s okay if you don’t.”  
“Chase,” whispers Chase.  
“You’re right!” says Jackie, smiling and squishing his hand. “Nice! I’m Jackie.”  
“I don’t… remember you.”  
“Hey, it’s okay,” soothes Jackie, hearing the guilt in his voice. “Really, it is. Your brain’s still unscrambling. We’ll make sense of everything as we go, even if you don’t remember. I’m Jackie, and this is Henrik, and that’s Marv.”  
Chase’s eyes look up and their gazes meet for the first time. Marvin does not want to intimidate him, but he doesn’t have it in him to smile. He inclines his head a little, looking back at Chase with big dark eyes for only a moment before he can no longer bear to see the soft stain of blood at his bandages or the sorrow in his face.  
Chase nods slowly. “Jackie,” he says. “Henrik. Marvin.”  
And then, very quiet, his eyes watering: “I’m really, really sorry. Caused s-so much trouble… I’m just a mess for everybody to clean up.”  
Henrik and Jackie are already moving closer to comfort him, murmuring reassurances and affections at him. Marvin cannot move. Chase looks up at him again, and, again, Marvin just gives him a little nod, and Chase lets his gaze linger on him, his blue eyes glowing in the morning light through the windows.  
————————-  
Speech and physical therapy take up most of the first few weeks of Chase’s life. The stammer will never quite go away, but he’s getting better at motor control every day.  
“There you go,” encourages his trainer, watching Chase step down the hallway, his hand against one wall, focusing so hard on his feet that he’s sweating. “Think you can make it to the end of the hall?”  
“Not really,” croaks Chase, staring at the expanse in front of him. Ten more meters feels like a continent.  
“I’d like you to try today, if you can.”  
Chase groans but does not complain, taking another shaky step with bones made of jello, trying to keep steady. It almost hurts to have to work this hard for it and his brain is as exhausted as he is humiliated to be trying so hard. He puts his foot down, but it doesn’t stay firm; he slips and then tumbles –  
Marvin grabs him and catches him before he falls, his arms warm and strong around Chase’s waist, pulling him gently back up until he can stabilize himself, clinging dizzily to Marvin’s shirt.  
“Whoa! There you go.” The therapist stands awkwardly beside them. “Here, should we try – ”  
“He’s good for today, thanks,” interrupts Marvin, holding Chase close.  
Okay, maybe Jackie and Henrik would help him keep going. Push him to greater heights. Urge on his recovery. Maybe Jackie would talk about how strong he is, really, and how he’s going to get through this, while Henrik rattled on about recovery statistics and the neural activity in Chase’s brain and the injuries he’s sustained. Maybe it’s good that they would. And maybe – maybe with anyone else, Marvin would say the same. Toughen up. Get up again. Keep going. No excuses. Maybe he’d be stern with his other brothers.  
But Chase is clinging so gently to his shirt. His body is so warm so close to him. His eyes are downcast and stormy and he doesn’t look up.  
Marvin wants to be soft with Chase. Maybe Chase needs someone to be soft with him. And Marvin, for all that he can be proud, can’t find it in him for a second to judge Chase for falling down and wanting to lie there for a little while. He’ll watch over him while he rests. Long as he wants. Henrik and Jackie can pull Chase up. Marvin will just hold him.  
He all but carries Chase back to his room and sets him gently on his bed, leaning down so their faces are close. And again, again, they do not speak – they have not spoken to each other yet, not once, not really – but Chase lets their faces be close, and he meets Marvin’s eyes and puts his head down against Marvin’s collarbone. Still gripping at his shirt. Still letting himself be held up. Marvin is soft with him. Marvin holds on.  
——————  
“Okay, so what you’re telling me is I can have anything I want?”  
Oh, fuck him. Oh, fuck him. He’s so cute. Stop.  
“That’s what I said,” answers Marvin.  
“Anything I want? What if I want… uh. Uh…”  
Marvin can’t help the snort that leaves him. “Are you stammering again or can you not even think of anything to ask for?”  
“Hey, shut up, man!” giggles Chase, chucking a plastic spoon at him. Marvin slaps it away from his face, leaning back, and just looks at Chase, an indulgent sort of calm on his face. Oh, he’s getting his color back these days, his white cheeks getting pink again, his freckles cooling against warm skin. He’s so dorky and sweet. Today he’s in a good mood.  
“Now you don’t have a spoon for your jello.”  
“Fuck!” Chase lets out a whining groan, slumping back down on his pillows, and pulls Marvin’s name out in a long complaint. “Ma-aa-aa-rr-vinnnnn. Can I have another spoon?”  
“You can have anything,” says Marvin. He wishes he could stop smiling, but he can’t. Not when Chase is smiling back at him. He gets to his feet. He’ll find him a spoon. “You can have anything you want.”  
He’s heading out the door when Chase calls him back.  
“Hey – Marv? Is it okay if I call you that?”  
“Yeah, sweetie, what is it?”  
“Um. Um.” He stares down at his opened jello cup, his mouth shaking a little. “Um. Why… why do you bother with somebody like me?”  
Oh, fuck. This seems like emotional territory. Okay, Marvin, you got this, you got this. He comes back to Chase’s bedside. Oh, geez. What would Jackie say? What would Henrik? Probably something sappy about just saying what’s on your heart, about unconditional positive regard and blah blah blah, about just being honest –  
“I don’t know,” says Marvin.  
The truth is past his mouth before he’s had a chance to consider it. Chase stares up at him slightly open-mouthed and Marvin feels his heat, great as it always is, rising even hotter in his cheeks, but he guesses he picked this train and he can’t stop rolling now.  
“I have no idea, Chase. I don’t know you. You don’t know me. We’re family, sure, but… to be completely honest with you, I fucking hated Schneep’s guts when I first met him.”  
Chase giggles again, picking at his bedsheets. “I like Schneep…”  
“Don’t, he’s a bastard.”  
“Marvin! Haha.”  
“I like him too. And I like you. I don’t know why. Do you know what that means?”  
Chase shakes his bandaged head, staring up at him. Marvin feels overcome. Destroyed and recreated in his gaze. Chase looks at him like he’s so special. Like he’s so good. He wants to be the person Chase thinks that he is. His heart shakes. He leans down and he bumps their foreheads gently together. Just like Jackie used to do when Marvin was still so small and insecure, and needing someone to love him hard no matter what stupid shit he got up to. No matter what he did. He needed Jackie. Now Chase needs him.  
“It means,” he says. “That no matter what happens – no matter what you do – no matter who you become – I will still be right here for you.”  
Chase’s mouth shudders and his eyes tighten as water rises in them. He gives a sad little hiccup and entwines his fingers in Marvin’s shirt.  
“That will never change. Do you understand?”  
Chase hiccups again and nods, letting out a little whimper.  
“You can have anything you want,” whispers Marvin, and what he means is “you can have everything I am.”  
You will always have everything I am.  
Chase is off suicide watch two days later.  
———————–  
“What the fuck are you two doing?”  
He finds Chase and Henrik slumped across the couch and each other’s laps at three in the morning the night after Chase comes home, splitting a single bowl of leftovers and a whole carton of beers.  
“Eating baked ziti,” says Henrik, shoving another forkful of pasta into his mouth. “And watching Trevor Noah.”  
“Why are you doing that so late?” Marvin demands, coming over to stand beside the two of them, peering down at their little brother faces. “Your terrible sleep schedule is going to ruin Chase’s.”  
Chase just looks up at him with big blue eyes and long dark eyelashes. “Needed to stay up,” he says, in a soft croak. “Nights are the hardest. Stay with us a while, Marv?”  
Marvin sighs, glancing between the tv and his brothers. They look like they’ve been drowning out deep conversations in comedy specials, and he doesn’t want to be a part of this if somebody’s going to start crying. Anyway, Henrik has this handled, and it’s late. He just got up because Queenie was attacking his window again – the new house they moved into four weeks before Chase was born has allowed her even greater mischief-making opportunities.  
“I’m okay, thanks,” says Marvin, and when Chase’s eyes falter and look down, he lets the guilt flit through his stomach for only a moment before burying it down deep.  
He’s here. He’s watching over him. He’s always close enough that Chase could come get him. That’s all that matters. Henrik and Jackie can handle the rest.  
Right?  
He’s woken up again two hours later by the sound of screaming. Henrik is gripping Chase’s shoulders in the bathroom, his razor held safely away from him. Chase has broken the mirror and his fist is bleeding, and from all the way in his room, Marvin can hear him screaming.  
“I’m just a fucking waste of space! Why won’t anybody let me die?”  
And Marvin doesn’t know what to do.  
—————————-  
Weird how recovery works. Weird how recovery isn’t always recovery at all. Cause Chase has mad days – oh, Chase has wild days, and it doesn’t help that Jackie still hovers too close, and Jack stares at him like he’s sorry he created him, and Henrik’s bossiness has reached levels previously unheard of by mortal ears.  
Chase, Marvin finds, watching from afar as he screams and throws things and breaks shit and drinks, is a lot like Jackie, probably a lot more than either of them have noticed. His frustration converts directly into the need to move, for one, so he paces like a rabid tiger and bakes furiously at four in the morning, dozens of cupcakes lined up with different colors of frosting across the kitchen. No one comments, the next morning, but they eat every last one resolutely, even when the blue ones go stale as rocks, because Chase seems to like to feed them. Like Jackie, he’s a protector, just not in the same way. He won’t go out and get in a fight for them, necessarily, but he does snuggle up with anybody who sits down close to him, offer to do their laundry incessantly, and feed them like he can make up for the bullet wound in his head with breadcrumb pasta and sugar buns. It’s just his own form of protection and he’s as compelled to protect as Jackie, who’s as compelled to protect as a rat given a Ritz cracker in a cage full of enemies, who, I should tell you, is really really really compelled. Rats fucking love Ritz crackers and fucking hate sharing. Don’t get me started. The point is that Chase’s recovery was less like a steady upward hike with a couple tumbles and more like a bomb going off less and less often as time goes by, but they never knew how bad the explosion would be.  
Marvin rarely interfered.  
Sometimes Chase would ask for him while he was screaming or sobbing or struggling to breathe and Marvin… Marvin still would not interfere. Jackie and Henrik could handle it. Chase would be fine.  
I can’t help you. I know you think I can, but I can’t. I’m not good with people, Chase. You don’t want me there.  
“Marvin, Chase seems freaked and I think he feels safer when you’re there. Can you come sit with him awhile?”  
“I don’t think he wants me, Jackie. Besides, I know you like sitting up with him. You got this, man.”  
“Um… okay, I guess?”  
The guilt is so big it hurts his lungs and his heart. But he’s trying to freeze it over. He’s trying, he’s trying. He can’t feel all this. It’s too much. Even for Chase. Isn’t it?  
I can’t help you.  
“Marvin? Is Marvin home? Can you get him for me?”  
I’ve never been able to help anyone.  
Eventually Chase’s rage plateaus and then sinks away.  
Suddenly there is no more yelling in the house. No more broken glass. No more frantic baking. The alcohol he keeps sneaking home is consumed in silence, alone in his room.  
He’s not angry anymore. He’s just… sad.  
Tired.  
In these days he can often be found just staring. Just staring. Just staring.  
And Marvin, who had hoped that Chase’s hurt would go away as time goes on, who had hoped that Chase’s hurt would go away the longer he kept the house safe for him and made sure he did not trip and that no one made him feel bad, finds that somehow, this silence is worse.  
He wants to help.  
He wants to help more than he’s ever wanted anything. The thought, when it crosses his mind, astounds him. He wants to help Chase more than he’s ever wanted anything for himself.  
You’re making me soft, Chase.  
But he still doesn’t know what to do.  
(Or maybe he’s just afraid to do it.)  
————–  
“Marvin,” asks Henrik, when they’re watching a documentary about birds and his brother’s feet are strewn across his thighs. “What are you doing?”  
Marvin turns to look at him with his great dark cat eyes, an uncertain twist already entering his mouth. He squirms on his cushions and digs his heels into Henrik’s thighs and shrugs.  
“You watch over Chase like a hawk,” says Henrik.  
“That’s a falcon, idiot,” grumbles Marvin, as a peregrine swoops across the tv screen.  
“But you don’t do anything to comfort him other than step in when he’s in trouble.”  
Marvin looks balefully over at him, lunar in the white light of the tv. He lets out a short, scoffing sigh.  
“Come on,” insists Henrik, shoving at his feet. “Why are you acting like this? What are you doing?”  
“Look, scooping him out of the way of traffic and making sure he takes his medicine in the morning is a lot easier and much more obvious than actually knowing how to help him when he’s just… lying in his bedroom.”  
“You don’t have to be much else other than be there for him,” says Henrik gently.  
“Don’t try to sound wise, Doc, it doesn’t fit you. Little wild goat man.”  
“What? Why am I goat? Hey! You are the goat man.”  
“No, you.”  
“You are!”  
“Little monkey man. One of those little black ones at the zoo.”  
“Those are marmosets.” Henrik shakes his head at him, derisive. “You complete buffoon, Marvy.”  
Marvin’s mouth twitches, trying not to smile, and eventually he has to turn away to hide his grin, which results in a smug little smirk sitting on his brother’s mouth. Marvin does a sit-up from his comfy position just to smack him in the arm.  
“Gremlin,” he mumbles at Henrik, looking softly at him.  
“Really, though, won’t you just try to talk to him sometime?”  
“Haven’t you and Jack and Jackie got this covered, man? I don’t want to fucking smother him.”  
“Look, we’re doing our best. And yes, it’s true that him and I get along like a house on fire, because obviously I’m much more fun than all of the rest of you idiots. And smarter and cleverer and amazing in every way. I’m trying everything I can and I’m glad he’s been talking to me more lately, but there’s still a blank space in his life right now, a question mark, and you’re it, Marvin.”  
Marvin gives a low grumble and takes a sip from the cat-shaped mug Jackie bought him for Christmas, putting his mouth between the little orange ears as heat rises to his face.  
“You know how much he likes you. How he always looks at you before making decisions now. You make him feel safe, Marvin. He’s gotten used to you watching over him. He wants you to be there for him too, but he’s not in a place where he can admit that right now.”  
Marvin has to set his cup down and turn away again to hide his blood-hot cheeks, ferocity pounding in his chest. He doesn’t know why it wakes something up in him. The thought of Chase wanting him to protect him. Wanting him to look after him. He didn’t get this kind of pride with Henrik. Henrik was Jackie’s to protect, he supposes, in their own way, and he had been jealous. But Chase – Chase needs him.  
Chase is small and ill and trusts him and he could be sitting in his room upstairs right now just wishing Marvin would come talk with him. And he won’t do that because – what? He’s scared?  
What is there to be scared of?  
The mortification of vulnerability and fraternal affection? offers some tired voice inside of him. He needs to push this shit down before it gets out of hand. He can’t go falling apart just to make Chase feel better. That’s too frightening. To be known by Chase. To be known by yet another person. A part of him wishes his family would stop growing just so he didn’t have to keep opening up his narrow heart.  
“What am I even supposed to do, Henrik?” sighs Marvin. “I’m not good at talking to people. Mostly because I hate them and it’s really rude that you haven’t gotten rid of everyone on the planet for me.”  
“You could do more than you give yourself credit for, I believe. He’s being an aggressive, defensive, angry little man child because he’s scared,” says Henrik. “Thought you might be able to relate to that.”  
Marvin growls and throws his legs farther over Henrik’s legs, ruffling the papers at his side. His little brother impales him with a glare.  
“Come on, Marvy! I thought you wanted to look after him.”  
“Don’t call me Marvy.”  
Henrik frowns, crossing his arms over his chest and squishing himself down a little on the couch. “I can’t? But I am your little brother…”  
“Haha,” laughs Marvin triumphantly, throwing a grape at him. “Doesn’t work anymore, demon. You’ve lost baby brother privileges.”  
“Hey! No, not true!”  
“Are you feeling neglected with the new baby, Henrik? You’re not going to run away, right? Oh, my goodness, Schneep. Who’s going to bring you sandwiches during your lunch break?”  
“No! You still have to bring me sandwiches, Marvin! Jackie, you will still bring me sandwiches?”  
“He can’t hear you, Schneep, he’s already pre-occupied with Chase. Ouch. Sorry, Hen. End of an era.”  
Henrik brings his clipboard down on Marvin’s shoulder, scowling. “You are so mean to me!” he complains. “Worst big brother!”  
Marvin snorts and sits up on the couch only to flop back onto it, sliding down until his head rests on Henrik’s shoulder, where his little brother continues to attack him with paperwork, berate him in two different languages, and beg him, “Marvy, you will try to help him more though, won’t you? Won’t you?”  
Fuck how sweet he can be when he’s begging. Marvin knows he’s a feral little monkey man in truth, but these days he’s fonder and fonder of his doctor, and the part of him that hates how much power he has over him is weaker than the part of him that loves Henrik more than he loves himself. And that is Henrik’s fault. Baby brother privileges. They’re a goddamn trap! One minute you’re being spoiled rotten by Jackie and Jack, living the good life, and then the next you’re delivering turkey and salami pesto sandwiches to the hospital at two in the morning or climbing up the stairs towards Chase’s room, hoping to be there for him, even though you’ve never known how to be there for anyone and you’re terrified.  
————————————–  
It goes well, though.  
In fact, it turns out to be fucking everything Chase was longing for. It doesn’t matter that Marvin doesn’t know what to say. He’s there, with Chase, sitting with him, and Chase has grown to trust him so much simply from the way he has watched over him. When he tells Chase he loves him – a hushed whisper, sh, he has told this to only three people in his life and he did not plan to add a fourth until you came along, Chase, amata – Chase is crying before he can get the words fully out, reaching out for Marvin with grabbing hands like a little kid.  
For a second, Marvin shakes with the fear of it. He can feel how melted his heart is. He can feel that Chase could ask anything of him and he would get it for him. He would do it. He loves Chase and here the love is – it is the feeling that someone else could destroy you, could split you in half, could break your heart like a butterfly wing and, equally important, it is the decision to stay despite that fear. Here the love is – himself pressing forward to scoop Chase into his body, himself holding his little brother, himself listening as Chase pours out everything that makes him scared and angry and weak like a hot black poison from his mouth. Here the love is – he is crying. He has let Chase make him cry. He bares the heart of the iceberg and lets Chase card his fingers through his hair as they sit awake and keep each other safe. Here it is. The sun is rising. Did they talk all night? Chase is a hot water bottle running warm against him. His heartbeat is the only thing that matters.  
“I just don’t think I can do this,” whispers Chase. “Every day I wake up thinking that. I can’t do this. I can’t do this. I can’t take it anymore. I can’t no matter how hard I try.”  
“And yet,” says Marvin. “Here you are.”  
“I have to fight so hard…”  
“That you’re fighting at all is enough.” Marvin holds on to him. “You are a fighter, a fierce one. I know, you get the same light in your eyes that Jackie does. And the rest? The rest I’ll help you with. Anything you need. You’ll come to me and I will make it right for you. Because you are mine and this is what brotherhood is in our family. Understand?”  
He presses their foreheads together. Chase looks up at him with big eyes, not blue like Jackie’s or Henrik’s. Not even blue like Jack’s, Marvin sees now. His little brother. His baby brother. Blue like starlight. I will make it right for you.  
“You just keep fighting,” he says. “Promise?”  
Another thing Chase has in common with Jackie:  
He can do just about fucking anything if you believe in him.  
He has a strength to him.  
Marvin sees it.  
“Okay,” says Chase. “Promise.”  
————  
Chase’s energy comes and goes less reliably than the wildest tides, but on the days when he’s got it, oh, baby, does he ever got it. Fuck, Marvin’s in awe of him. He wants to be everybody’s friend, all he does is smile, everything’s an adventure to him on those days. He’s got Jackie’s enthusiasm and Henrik’s mischief and Jack’s LOUDNESS and Marvin loves him.  
(He has some of Marvin in him, too, but this is not something Marvin ever notices: Chase’s quick, grinning sarcasm, Chase’s vanity, Chase’s desire to find out who he is and be that person to the fullest – these are all things they have in common, though I doubt they will ever notice it consciously. All they know is the brotherhood between them and it is plenty, it is enough.)  
It’s strange. All the sorrow he’s been through – all the sorrow he’s still going through – all the long nights they share, sitting up to help him through his struggle, to deal with him when he’s angry and hurting, and yet, at the end of the day, all Marvin learns to associate him with is this great and boundless joy. They do more things together because of him, all four of them sliding into booths at restaurants or even cooking huge family meals together on Sunday – brunch with chocolate pancakes, if Jackie gets his way, and they almost always allow big brother to get his way. Jackie is a proud mama bird these days, checking in on each and every one of them as often as he can, always sharing their distress (sometimes too strongly) when they’re upset and then practically buzzing with joy when he hears they’re doing well. They watch whole shows together (Henrik you better NOT have watched the next episode without them!), try to convince Jackie to let them help him solve the constant mysteries that are always cropping up in his work, and, perhaps best of all, they simply start… doing things together. Marvin doesn’t even notice until one day he looks up from his Spanish homework and sees Henrik doing paperwork at the table, Jackie working on his laptop beside him, and cheery little Chase baking pie in the kitchen beside them.  
There’s a comfort to all of it. An ease, an incredible, calm, loving ease. And even on the nights where Chase is wild with all of it, or Jackie comes home beat, or Henrik gets dangerously obsessive about something at work – well, they’re all learning to deal with each other, to be kinder and closer and better to each other.  
Marvin feels like he has a family. A real family. Not just Jackie, his friend. Not just Henrik, his housemate. This is his family.  
Chase, you made us a family.  
And the weeks go by and despite the hard times everything in Marvin’s life is good, is warm and sunny and kind to him; everything in Marvin’s life is light through the windowpane on a morning you’ve been allowed to sleep in.  
He remembers being young and terrified of the world around him, biting his teeth at it, biting his teeth at Jackie, and it’s almost funny to him, because it turns out, that against all the odds he could see stacked up against him, his story has a happy ending.  
And then –  
And then –  
And then.  
Oh, reader. You know what happens.  
—————————  
“Jack? Henrik?”  
No. Not this.  
“Jack! Jack! Henrik?”  
Blood stains the carpet. Jack barely breathes. Marvin and Jackie cannot find their doctor.  
Anything but this.  
—————————-  
There’s a hard drive hidden in Jack’s top drawer, with a note labeled:  
Jackie. If you’re reading this, something must have happened to me. I’m sorry. I love you all. This is an emergency measure. You know that sometimes an idea gets a hold on me. I couldn’t stop him, so I froze him right here in time. If everything goes really wrong, I hope he can save you. My boys. I wanted him to just be another member of your family, but I can’t trust myself to create anymore. His story is too sad in my mind. I’m scared something will happen to him like something happened to Chase. Like something might be happening to all of you right now.  
I created Anti. I know what he could do. So here’s my emergency measure. Please be sure you can keep him safe before you let him come to be.  
His name is Jameson Jackson. I wish I could be there for him too. I wish I could be there for all of you. I love you. I’m sorry.  
Jack.  
Jackie’s there, holding the hard drive with trembling fingers.  
If he wasn’t, Marvin would have snapped that motherfucking memory stick between his fucking fingers. His nails dig into his palms, leaving bloody moons behind. His teeth meet each other violently in his mouth and grind.  
No.  
No.  
No.  
No more little brothers.  
No one will replace his Henrik. To post it would be to admit that Jack was never waking up again. And Marvin already has enough of these little fuckers sneaking into his heart and making him hurt when they disappear. Hurt worse than he’s ever even imagined hurting in his whole fucking life.  
Jameson Jackson can stay in that fucking hard drive and rot.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There will be two parts about Jameson! cause he's the best and deserves the world what can i say


	4. Henrik's Replacement

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Marvin meant it. He doesn't want this little brother. It doesn't matter how sweet he is, how cute he is, how much the others love him. He took Henrik's place and Marvin won't forgive him for that. Not easily.  
> This isn't the last chapter! It's a long one though haha. Enjoy!  
> Trigger warnings for Marvin being legitimately mean and yelling, discussion of cancer, implied internalized homophobia, and blood and some injury

“I don’t like you,” he tells him, the first time they find themselves alone, before Jameson can open his mouth to say something that would undoubtedly be sweet and interested and just shy enough to be endearing. “I don’t like you and I didn’t ask for you. Actually I told Jackie you were a bad idea and that I didn’t think you should exist. So let’s not pretend to be friends.”

Jameson blinks and looks down at the pavement, his usually expressive face going quiet and unmoving, his mouth slightly twisted, but no other emotion waiting for interpretation on his face. Marvin scowls down at him and turns away.

“I don’t like you,” he repeats. “I don’t want you and we’re not brothers. Got it?”

Jameson just looks at him. Doesn’t dignify his cruelty with a response. Marvin hates that. Marvin hates him. Hates everything about him. Most of all his eyes. Chase has deep and velvet eyes, and Jackie’s are a blue flame, but Henrik’s were always cold and faraway stars, and now – goddamn Jameson is the same. He has Henrik’s eyes, the beautiful little fucker. He stole his little brother’s eyes. Pretty crystal eyes to make poets rhyme. Sharp as Jack’s at least.

Thief.

He takes Henrik’s phone, too, or Jackie gives it to him, and when Marvin sees it in his hands two weeks after Jameson was created – the anger is like a bullet. He’s been shot. He’s bleeding hatred. He’s seething with it.

“That’s not fucking yours!” he hears himself scream, tearing it out of Jameson’s hands, and the newcomer jolts back and drops the plate with toast and dripping he was holding. The ceramic shatters all over the floor in the space between them.

“Sorry,” Jameson stammers, too startled to realize he has every right to defend himself. “I’m sorry, I didn’t know it – ”

“This is Henrik’s! You went into his room? You took my little brother’s shit? What, you think he’s dead, huh? You think he’s not coming back, won’t fucking need it?”

“No, no, I just…”

Marvin’s squeezing the phone so tight it could shatter, but there’s a case on it, one Marvin bought for Henrik himself because he saw it at the store and the thought of Henrik having it made him cackle. It’s a cat flipping the world off with human fingers and a glare on its face, and he had expected Henrik to roll his eyes and throw it away, but he put it on his phone instead, just to prove to Marvin that he would. They did a lot of stupid shit trying to one-up each other’s teasing, and Marvin looks down at that smug little cat flipping him off and feels his eyes sting.

“Get the fuck out of my house,” he spits, eyes watering.

“Marvin,” says JJ carefully.

“Get the fuck out of my house!” Marvin screams, stalking towards him. “Fucking brat, stealing my brother’s shit! You can’t just – !”

“Marvin!” someone howls behind him, and he turns to see his own rage, in all its intensity, mirrored in Jackie’s blue fire eyes. “Don’t you dare fucking talk to him like that.”

“Oh, shut the hell up, you self-righteous prick.”

“I gave him Henrik’s phone. He’s not using it. Don’t yell at him!”

“Then I’ll yell at you!” shouts Marvin, throwing the phone to the ground. “You can’t just hand out Henrik’s things like he’s dead!”

Jackie’s fury is struck with shock, flashing through his eyes. “That’s not – no, Marv, I just – I didn’t think of it like that.”

“All you think about is him!” snarls Marvin, throwing a finger back at Jackie’s littlest brother, Jackie’s little favorite, who is kneeling on the ground, slowly picking up the broken pieces of the plate. “Well, guess what, Jackie? He isn’t what you wanted and he isn’t protecting us like Jack promised and he isn’t going to be able to get Henrik back, so maybe you should stop trusting in this little stranger and actually start trying to find my real brother again.”

Jackie’s gripping him by the shirt before Marvin can stop him, and Marvin, burning with anger, lets himself be marched down the hall towards their rooms at the back of the hall. Jackie shoves him into the laundry cupboards and his gaze bores down into him, burning. Marvin glares right back, mouth set.

“He’s two weeks old,” growls Jackie, making a visible effort to stay calm. “Let him have time to find his feet. To find himself. Maybe if you would actually teach him something, he would know a little magic by now!”

Marvin whips his head away, feeling his tears heat up again behind his eyes.

“He’s just borrowing Henrik’s phone until we can go get him a new one. He wanted to look at jobs, Marvin. He’s lost just like you were when you were young, lost just like all of us were.”

“He is not,” spits Marvin. “Like me. He is not like us.”

Jackie sighs and releases Marvin’s shirt, turning his head away.

“I’m going to let this go,” he says. “Because I know it’s not really Jameson you’re mad at.”

Marvin stares down at the ground, blinking fast.

“You did everything you could to keep Schneep safe, Marvin. You didn’t know. We – ”

“Shut up,” spits Marvin, wiping his tears away so fast he’s all but slapping himself. “Shut up, I don’t want to talk about this.”

“Fine,” says Jackie unhappily, straightening up. “But if I see you taking all of this out on Jameson again, something’s going to have to change. You owe him an apology, Marvin.”

Fucking yeah, right. “Feed me to my cats first,” answers Marvin coolly, though his shaking voice betrays him somewhat, and he pushes Jackie away and moves back down the hall, away from his room, trembling across his whole body. Out of Jackie’s sight, he can pick up his pace, and he’s all but sprinting towards the stairs, not even pausing to look at JJ, carefully, silently sweeping up the mess he made. Marvin finds Henrik’s room at the top of the stairs and he slides into the cool green surroundings of his brother’s room before he lets anyone see him, throwing himself onto the bed and shoving his face into the pillows.

Clean bandages and coffee and cinnamon body wash smell.

Marvin shoves himself under the covers of the bed and cries.

Stupid fucking Henrik. Getting himself kidnapped. Stupid fucking Jack, not realizing it was all a trap until it was too late. Stupid fucking terrifying Anti, tearing his family apart and leaving a little black and white wannabe time traveler in the spaces he left behind.

He just wants his family back. Not a new one, not a changed one. Just Henrik and Jack and Chase and Jackie, Jackie as he was before all this exhaustion came crashing over him and made him into a new person, a person Marvin isn’t sure he knows at all, a person who’s in pain Marvin can’t seem to soothe. Or maybe he’s just been too angry to try.

He falls asleep. An hour later, awakening, he finds Jackie sitting beside him, rubbing his back slowly.

They don’t say anything for a long time. Outside Henrik’s window, it has begun to rain, soft and trickling, making the air fragrant, the earth dark, and the leaves fall. A single hour and dark rain is enough to wash the anger between them away again. He looks so sad and so worn, like something very heavy has taken its place around his throat, and Marvin wants to comfort him.

“What are you looking at?” asks Marvin eventually, his voice soft and raw.

Jackie reaches out to help him sit up and pulls him to his side. Marvin presses himself gently against his shoulder and his ribs, wrapping his arms slowly around him, wondering if Jackie will push him away. Jackie does not. He offers Marvin one side of the picture he pulled from Henrik’s bedside table.

It’s a small picture of the three of them, taking a picture with a puma at the zoo whose attention Marvin had caught with a couple secretive, flashy magic tricks. Jackie is laughing so hard his eyes are squeezed shut and you can see the backs of his teeth, Marvin is grinning with the greatest self-satisfaction, and Henrik, caught between looking at the puma or at his brothers, is clearly trying not to smile, his mouth curling but his eyebrows lowered in an attempt to be scolding. Marvin’s eyes are still raw enough to water once again.

Yeah, that was Henrik. That was Henrik.

Marvin’s never cried as much in his life as he has in the past couple months. You did that, he thinks at the picture. You did that, you battered and shoved your way into my heart and then you broke it. You broke it.

Jackie hugs him around his shoulders and sets his head down on Marvin’s.

“Why didn’t you call us the second you realized something was wrong?” croaks Marvin, touching the image of his lost little brother. “Didn’t you know we would have protected you? Wasn’t your fight… I would have been there… why wasn’t I there…”

Jackie stares down at his folded hands, eyes red. Silent. All the noise is gone from him these days. He never shouts anymore. Not right to see him so quiet. He drifts between them all like a ghost, haunting them with dedication. No one is allowed to be out of his sight for too long. Least of all the newcomer, the youngest. Least of all Jackie’s black and white heart.

Jackie’s replacement Henrik.

Marvin wants to shove that picture back at him with burning fingers and let him watch the image of their little brother smiling curl up with the heat beneath melting glass. He wants to stalk off or shout at him. He wants to go find Jameson and shout at him too. He wants to make them hurt.

No.

No, he doesn’t. Not really.

Just wants Henrik back.

Just needs someone to punish for this.

“Jackie,” he whispers, burying his face in his hands, and then Jackie’s arms are around him, and their hands hold the picture of the three of them, together in the space between them, and they rest their heads side-by-side, and when he cries, Jackie says nothing at all, but holds on to him, holds on to him, holds onto him.

They have to survive Henrik’s loss somehow.

They do it together as often as they can.

Later that night, when Marvin returns to his room, Henrik’s phone case has been left propped up gently on his bed, flipping him off.

——————-

“Come out with me.”

Marvin stares down at his phone.

Tommy. 8:32 PM.

“Bit early for a booty call, isn’t it?” Marvin sends back, vaguely irritated without knowing why.

He resumes staring at the ceiling. He wonders how long it would take for him to glare a hole straight through it. Magicians can do that, right?

His phone buzzes again.

“Want to take you to dinner. For real tonight. Maybe a fight too. Come on, baby, you know you’re driving me wild.”

Marvin snorts. You have sex with a guy twice to distract you from your brother’s kidnapping and suddenly you’re ‘driving him wild.’ Typical.

But… intriguing.

Tommy’s cute. And definitely distracting. And Jackie keeps saddling up to his door all worried and small and going “Maaaarvin? Are you surrreeee you don’t want to go out and do something today?”

It would be good to get out of the house.

“Where are you going to take me?” he asks.

“Italian?” suggests Tommy.

“You’re going to get me garlic bread?”

“Don’t insult me. We’ll get every appetizer on the menu.”

Marvin laughs despite himself, flopping over on his bed, biting on his lip.

Tommy’s kind of fun.

“And a fight?”

“Found this little fight club, you’re not going to believe it. It’s like something out of a movie. I got money on a friend tonight. We’ll go see some teeth fly. Come on, it’ll be fun.”

Marvin hums to himself, staring up at the ceiling for a second longer.

Anything’s got to be better than endless sulking, he supposes. Especially if he’s getting laid.

“Pick me up at nine. Don’t be late.”

He’s dressed up by nine – just a little. Kind of messy, kind of casual. Tommy thinks he’s driving him wild now? Please. Marvin wasn’t even trying. He bounds down the hallway to get the door at 9:05. Chase is asleep in front of the tv. Jackie’s in his room. Jameson’s door is closed.

Marvin doesn’t have to think about them tonight, or Henrik or Jack either. Just Tommy and himself. Distraction.

He opens the door and links his arm with Tommy’s, breathing in the deep, pleasant smell of him and the rich awe of his love-struck voice. Just Tommy and himself. Just Tommy and himself. He deserves a break. He deserves a night of peace. Nothing will ruin this for him.

Garlic bread and calamari and laughter and a hand in his own. Marvin teases him and flirts and steals food from his plate. Cracks jokes and kisses him and murmurs sincere things when they’re walking away from the restaurant, their fingers tangling up in each other. And sure, he thinks about Henrik a little when he considers getting pepperoni on his pasta, and again when the rain comes down because Henrik loved running in the rain, and maybe he needs to take a minute in the bathroom to get his breath back and collect himself after someone across the room shouted loudly and enthusiastically enough to remind him of Jack, but you know what? He’s fine! He’s fine, yeah? And he’s having a good time. He’s having a good time.

“A fight club, huh?”

“Come here, look at this, this is wild, Marv.” Tommy takes his hand and they go slipping into a back alley, past a scary looking bouncer, down three flights of clanking metal stairs, into the scent of sweat and the shouts and cries of excited people with a thirst for a little casual blood. Marvin is clinging to Tommy’s palm and giggling, buoyed by the novelty and the energy and the feeling of having all of Tommy’s attention.

“These guys are legit, too,” Tommy is chattering, pulling him into a crowded room, and as he peeks over heads Marvin can just make out a pair of ducking and pouncing figures in an impromptu ring in the middle of the room. Their hands are wrapped up in fighting gauze and they’re shirtless, weaving back and forth, striking in fast, drawing back swift, dancing, dancing around each other. Marvin is smiling already, thinking about Jackie fighting like this. He could kick the ass of any man here.

“Yeah?” he calls back to Tommy over the ruckus of people shouting and money changing hands.

“Yeah! My cousin said he picked a tooth up off the ground once! And we definitely saw a guy get something in his face broken last week. Rumor has it they have knife fights for the really exclusive crowd, but I don’t know how to get in on that. Come over here, I want to introduce you to my friend before the match.”

“Cool!” Marvin lets Tommy drag him to the back of the right side of the room, where there’s actually a little bit of a stadium set-up and they can sit down with Tommy’s friends and still see the ring. His friends and family – there are three cousins here alone and Marvin isn’t sure he wants to know how many he has in total – are all excited and inviting, almost suspiciously so. Marvin suspects Tommy hasn’t been out of the closet long.

“Very cool that you’re here,” says Jeremy.

“Yes, very cool,” insists Kristine, clapping him on the shoulder.

“We love to see Tommy with someone.”

“Yeah, we love to see it. Good for Tommy to be with someone. Nice to meet you.”

“Super nice to meet you.”

Marvin just grins and laughs and feels Tommy squeezing warmly at his palm.

“Okay, so this is your friend about to fight?”

“Yeah! That’s Hasan. Goooo Hasan!”

Marvin lets out a whoop as Tommy’s friend mounts the stage to meet an opponent, the first fighter Marvin’s seen wearing a shirt. A clean, white shirt.

“Is your friend a good fighter?” he asks. “Going to kick some ass for our entertainment?”

“Haha, yeah, I hope so! He can be pretty vicious.”

“You know what’s kind of funny,” laughs Lawrence, another of Tommy’s companions. “That other guy looks kind of like your man here, Tom.”

“What? No, he doesn’t. Wait, actually…”

“Oh, I see it,” says Kristine.

“Yeah, if you just had a mustache, Marv.” Jeremy slaps his back, laughing. “He’s like your little doppelganger.”

Marvin stares out at the ring.

This is not happening.

“Maybe you should grow a mustache,” teases some other cousin. Marvin’s head feels thick and fuzzy. He grips at his own wrist, teeth gritted in his mouth.

The bell rings for the match to start and Marvin watches Hasan and Jameson sweep together like opposing tidal waves.

“Uh, Marv?” murmurs Tommy. “Babe, you good?”

He’s going to kill him. He’s going to kill him. The little – don’t they have enough fucking problems? He’s been – this is worse than – he’s going to kill him!

“Babe!”

Marvin’s on his feet and leaping down from the stadium seats, boots slamming onto the floor. His hands are so hot he feels his sleeves sizzle.

This – this is what he does with Chase’s trust. With Jackie’s heart. With his own safety. With the life Jack gave him. With the life he stole from Henrik.

He stalks forward and people part around him, startled by the heat he gives off and the look in his eyes. He feels like he’s moving at half-speed, like everything is moving at half-speed.

Except Jameson.

Fuck, he’s a viper, he’s a mongoose, and every movement is not only swift but mean, mean and vicious, tearing, destructive, calculated, intelligent. Hasan never had a chance. Tommy’s losing the money he put on him. Jameson is a thunderstorm and a lightning strike. Jameson is a tsunami.

Hasan crashes to the bottom of the ring. Marvin doesn’t pause even when someone shouts in alarm and reaches out to grab him – he leaps over the barrier and slams down in the ring, eyes dark.

Jameson freezes in place. Straddling Hasan. Fist drawn back. Staring at Marvin, alarmed.

“Jameson. Fucking. Jackson. What – and I mean this with the fullest vehemence and vulgarity, you little prude – the motherFUCK are you doing?”

A low, laughing groan goes up from the crowd.

“Someone’s in trouble,” he hears someone sing, and laughter goes up.

“Mom came to get him.”

“Hey, you’re supposed to be eighteen to fight, so why’s he got a baby-sitter, huh?”

The bell rings again and Marvin startles, but Hasan just flops into a defeated heap on the floor of the ring, and Jameson stands up and gets off him, his eyes flickering furtively, embarrassed, around the room. Luckily, the crowd isn’t genuinely annoyed, and a moment later an organizer is leaping forward to raise Jameson’s fist in the air.

Jameson doesn’t look proud. There’s a small spray of blood across his white shirt. His hands will bruise from the punching. His eyes are dark. Fixed on Marvin’s. Henrik’s eyes.

Marvin feels something in him break.

He turns and leaps back out of the ring, shoving out of the crowd, heading back towards the stairs.

“Marvin!” he hears both Tommy and Jameson call. “Marvin, wait!”

He’s already stalking back up the stairs, and he doesn’t know why he’s crying, and he won’t let them catch him until he’s already outside and of fucking course it’s fucking raining, of fucking course it is. He’s soaked in about two seconds.

“Marvin,” comes that soft, familiar voice in its stupid posh accent. “Marvin, listen, I – ”

“What were you thinking?” he screams, and he turns around to punch Jameson’s shoulder, hard. His little brother reels back, alarmed, and nearly crashes into Tommy, who’s staring at the two of them like someone trying to decide if he should run into a building on fire to save a cat. “My brothers adore you and you’re sneaking off in the middle of the night to get into stupid fights?”

“First of all,” snaps Jameson, the vitriol coming back to his face, and Marvin scowls immediately. “Getting into stupid fights late at night is what Jackie does for a living, thank you very much. And what’s more, our brothers ‘adoring me’ does not mean I have to be their little dress-up doll with which to do as they please. They’re perfectly respectful of my independence.”

“Oh, so they know about this, then?”

Jameson re-reddens immediately, looking anywhere but at Marvin.

“Chase knows you’re getting in fights? His little snuggle buddy sneaking out? Widdle baby feels like a man cause he knocks some other guy down once in a while? Aren’t you tough? Jackie knows his sweetie little pet is an attention whore who likes beating up other men?”

“Don’t mock me,” says Jameson quietly, staring at the sidewalk.

“They don’t know. And you and I both know they’d flip if they did. This is stupid, Jameson. You need to cut it the fuck out.”

“You don’t get to tell me what to do. I have to have a life too.”

Marvin wants to scream. And he’s never been one for self-restraint.

“Nobody cares about your life!” screams Marvin. “Don’t you get it? You were created to be Jack’s failsafe! That’s it! That’s the only reason he wanted you! And Jackie and Chase? They just needed a replacement Henrik! Well, guess what, Jameson – you’re nothing like him!”

He drives him back with a finger out-stretched, stabbing him in the bruised shoulder. “You’re not smart or talented or funny like he is! You’re not dependable or caring or always there, always fucking there when I need you! You’re not special, you’re not him, you’re not a part of my family! You’re nothing like him. And you never fucking will be.”

“I’m not trying to replace – ” Jameson begins, but his desperation is under-cut by his voice breaking sharply. He grasps at his throat and coughs, falling back from Marvin, his eyes watery and miserable. When he speaks again, his voice is hoarse and his face wet with more than just rain. “I’m not trying to replace him. You c-can’t just attack me like this.”

“You have a fucking sore throat and you’re still going out and getting in fights. Unbe-fucking-lievable. Idiot kid.”

“I’m not a kid,” croaks Jameson. “And you’re out late at night too! Does Jackie know this friend of yours, huh, the one who brings you to fight clubs for fun?”

“That is my date,” spits Marvin. “And we were having a good fucking night before I had to come play nanny for my idiot little brother.”

“I didn’t ask you to – he – he – date?”

And then Jameson trails off entirely, staring at Tommy.

Tommy stares between the two of them, eyes wide.

Marvin stares at Jameson.

“What?” he snaps finally. “He what?”

If Jameson was crimson before, he’s a tomato of a man now. Henrik’s stolen eyes shift uneasily between the two of them, reddened and confused and exhausted.

“What?” Marvin repeats, a old ache firing up in his chest. “What?”

He wants Jameson to give him an answer. Any answer but what he thinks he’s thinking.

“I’m going home,” whispers Jameson in that broken, sore voice, and he turns and lets the rain swallow him up.

Marvin stares after him.

Soaked and stiff. His heart still pounding from yelling and his traitorous eyes still burning.

“He… didn’t know you were gay?” asks Tommy.

Marvin takes one step forward, and that is enough – Tommy understands. The warm arms of his date encircle him. Marvin buries himself in his chest.

“It’s alright,” murmurs Tommy. “I know. I’m sorry.”

Ruined make-up. Ruined date. Ruined… fuck. Everything.

He just wants Henrik. He just wants Henrik. He just wants Henrik. How many times does he have to say it to the universe for it to realize that leaving him without his family is too cruel to be true?

Why wasn’t he there to protect him?

He wants Henrik to be home right now, back from a late shift, eating whatever shit he could find in the fridge. Marvin would throw his legs over his lap to annoy him and steal half his plate and then they’d spend the whole night watching useless documentaries and snarking at each other, comfortable and warm. And Marvin would tell him all about Tommy, even the explicit details, because Henrik only ever grumbled good-naturedly about it, and Henrik would tell him all about work, because Marvin loved nothing better than to hear him gossip, and eventually Chase would get up and they would demand he make them eggs and turkey bacon for breakfast, and Jackie would wake up to the smell, and everything would be okay.

That’s what he wants.

Jameson could even be there too, if he had to. But he wouldn’t be an imposter. He wouldn’t be trying to get hurt, trying to break Marvin’s brothers’ hearts. He wouldn’t mind if Marvin went on a date with a man.

Ruined reputation. Sobbing into Tommy’s shirt.

“Come on,” murmurs Tommy. “I’ll get us a ride back to my place and we’ll sit down and talk all you want.”

“I can’t talk about this,” chokes Marvin, buried in his chest. “I… I…”

“We can just be together, then,” Tommy substitutes. “Put on a show for background noise and rest. I’ll get you a drink. Nothing has to happen. Come on, love. Come on.”

Distraction. Affection. Anything better than just… staring… endlessly at the ceiling.

“Okay,” whispers Marvin. “Okay.”

He goes back to Tommy’s house and sleeps in his bed. In the morning, he’ll leave a loving note and be gone by the time he wakes up.

What’s the point in getting attached to anyone? Universe just wants to break your fucking heart.

“Nihilist,” Henrik would tell him.

“Come home and I’ll rescind it,” he answers the memory.

But Henrik doesn’t come home.

————–

“Chase. Give me that.”

He sobs and throws back the bottle, ignoring Marvin’s grasping hand, clinging to its neck like it’s holding him over an abyss. Marvin turns his head and sees Jackie in the doorway, rubbing his forehead. Exhausted. He tries to be angry at Chase for hurting him but doesn’t have the strength.

“You had a good four months, amata,” Marvin tells him, and Chase drops the bottle at last and cries so hard Marvin swears he sees the mirror shaking as the rest of his liquor drizzles across the bathroom floor. Jackie will clean it up later and search the rest of the house for anything more Chase has stashed, but he won’t find anything. Not because Chase doesn’t have anything else, but just because he’s gotten really fucking good at hiding shit from him.

Marvin shoots a dirty glare at Jameson’s room, empty on the other side of the hallway. Jackie and Chase think he’s still asleep.

And if he’s started taking a few more sleeping pills than he’s supposed to to get to sleep at night, well – he supposes they’ve all gotten good at hiding shit from Jackie.

“Hey, Marv,” Jackie whispers later that night, slipping into his room for a moment to check on him after getting Chase to bed. “You okay?”

Marvin pretends to be asleep.

Jackie stands over him for a moment. Marvin can feel him looking down at him.

He hears a soft shuddering noise and he thinks that Jackie is crying. The thought is so terrifying he does not move at all.

Marvin, get up. Hug him. Tell him it’s okay. That you’re proud of him and it’s not his fault.

Marvin doesn’t move.

Jackie’s weight comes down on the bed beside him. He strokes his hand through Marvin’s hair for long, quiet minutes, listening to the sound of his steady, sleepy breathing.

“I love you,” he murmurs, leaning down to knock their heads together for a moment before he rises again and leaves his room.

Marvin hears the click of the door.

And then – “Jamie… I’m… I’m sorry. I’m not… I’m just – ”

“It’s not your fault,” whispers Jameson’s soft and accented and – still rasping? Marvin registers curiously – voice. “I’m proud of you. It’s okay. I know how much you love us.”

And the soft ruffle of their clothes as Jameson moves forward to hold him.

The soft ruffle of Jameson being able to do something he can’t or won’t or is too scared to do, and his coughing, trying to clear something out of his throat while he murmurs reassurances to his big brother.

—————

“Can you stop fucking coughing?”

Jameson clears his throat and tries to acquiesce, but tiny coughs keep slipping out of him. He hides his mouth with his hand and Marvin is glad to see he at least looks a little embarrassed.

“Can’t deal with a fucking cold,” he grouses.

“Just something in my throat.” Jameson’s voice is hoarse.

“Can you be any grumpier about it?” teases Chase, punching his thigh hard enough to make Marvin grumble. “Jamie, I’ll get you cough medicine. We’ve still got some in the bathroom.”

“It’s really just something in my throat.”

JJ never likes to be the center of attention unless he’s story-telling. Marvin has noticed. He hates his stories. The kid acts like a fucking performer, some knock-off stand-up comedian, waving his hands around, theatrical, dramatic, acting.

More like a sit-down comedian, he thinks, and then he’s really glad he doesn’t say shit out loud. It would have made Chase go “GUH-HUH” in a dumb voice, though, so maybe it would have been worth it.

“Okay, we wanted Jurassic Park?” asks Jackie, flashing the disk at them. “We haven’t shown you this one yet?”

“No, no dinosaur movies.”

“He’s so fucking weird,” grouses Marvin. “All the rest of us had seen at least some movies when we were created.”

“Maybe it’s because Jack’s not around?” suggests Chase with a shrug. An uncomfortable silence falls over the rest of them, Jameson glancing at Jackie’s and Marvin’s faces with flickering eyes. Until –

“Can you stop fucking coughing?”

“Love movie night,” grumbles Jackie, shoving Jeff Goldblum’s face into his computer slot. “Family fucking bonding. Just like Jack would want. Doing him fucking proud.”

Chase cries into Jameson’s shoulder and handfuls of popcorn with M&Ms through most of the first fifteen minutes, just cause everything sucks and there’s only four of them and yeah, he thinks Jack would be sad to see them like this. Marvin is jealous he’s not the one holding him.

————–

“You fight pretty well,” Marvin says, a few days later.

JJ looks up at him, surprised.

“Oh.”

“Could play with your enemies a little less, could dance around less than you do, but pretty well.”

“Thank you. Have you…?”

“Yeah. I’ve come to a few of them. Don’t want you coming home with secret bruises like another one of my stupid brothers, so, yeah, I’ve come to a couple.”

“With that guy?”

Marvin stares down at the wood of their porch, rocking himself back and forth on the swing, holding the glass of wine Jameson came out to offer him because, apparently, he looked pensive.

“No,” he answers, sipping his Riesling.

“Oh. Okay. Didn’t… didn’t work out?”

“Why were you uncomfortable with the two of us?” asks Marvin, unable to keep a note of bitterness out of his voice.

Jameson’s eyes flicker nervously. He looks down at his feet, bare on the cold wood of the porch. “I… I wasn’t, uh…”

“I know you’re kind of old-fashioned, whatever,” says Marvin, clutching his glass too tight. “And that we don’t… get along. Sure. Fine. But this is the twenty-first century and you – whether I was cool with it at first or not, you’re a part of my family, so if you have a problem, you need to start – ”

“You aren’t what makes me uncomfortable,” Jameson cuts him off, too flatly.

Too emotionlessly.

Not lying. Too cold for lies. At least for talks like this one.

Marvin looks up at him. JJ is already turning away, slipping back into the house, his head low and his soft brown hair ruffled by the cool wind.

“Jameson?” he calls after him, getting to his feet.

But Jameson doesn’t hear. Or, at least, he doesn’t come back.

Marvin thinks about it for a long time.

But Jackie likes guys and, more importantly, likes JJ. He’ll leave it to him.

“Oh, JJ?” laughs Jackie, when he brings it up. “No, sensible as his shoes are, I can’t say I get a gay vibe from him. But he’d tell me if he wanted to tell me something like that. Hey, do you want to order Chinese for tonight?”

Obviously he does. Sweet and sour chicken, please. Right, yeah. Jackie’s got it handled.

—————-

“Jameson! Stop fucking coughing! It’s been like two weeks, the fuck is wrong with that kid?”

“Be nice to him,” whines Chase at the same exact time Jackie shouts it from the other room.

Marvin rolls his eyes. Jameson coughs out an apology from his place under Chase’s arm.

—————–

Occasionally, Marvin and JJ find moments of peace with each other, or at least Marvin finds peace with JJ, because Jameson is always, always, always happy to meet him in the middle.

(Infuriatingly so, Marvin finds, but he deals with it.)

They can work together like two parts of a machine on nights when Chase is drunk or Jackie comes home hurt, especially after Marvin takes a couple hours to school Jameson through the basics of first aid. “If you’re going to be a dumb-ass getting in fights, you should know the dumb-ass basics.” They both like quiet nights and silent hang-outs, so sometimes Marvin will glance over and see Jameson sitting in the armchair working patiently on his embroidery while Marvin screws around on his computer and find a sense of small camaraderie in it. Sometimes when they have a couple drinks in them they’ll have conversations. They talk about things like which pieces of classic literature they hate and which pieces of classic literature are fucking baller and their taste in clothes and witchcraft and religion and sometimes, sometimes, on the very late, almost silent nights – “What was Henrik like?”

Soft quietudes in the miles between them.

“He was a force to reckon with.”

“Yeah?”

“Yes.”

“Clever?”

“Unbelievably so.”

“And dependable.”

“Without fail.”

“He made you laugh.”

“But his sense of humor was so dry it was like he wasn’t telling jokes at all. Bitter, scathing, sarcastic, my favorite comedian. Caring, loyal, fierce, proud. Lovely, gentle. Firm, strong. Forgiving…”

Crickets and faraway stares in the miles and miles between them.

“You must have loved him really, really hard.”

Marvin did. Marvin does.

“I love all of them that hard. I didn’t realize it until he left. I never meant to fall this in love with them. My family.”

“I’m sorry. That you lost him.”

“I’m… sorry that you never got to meet him.”

And that we didn’t meet in better times.

Or maybe, says a voice somewhere painful and alone in the back of Marvin’s head, he could have been your brother in any time, if you were just a good enough person to part with a fourth piece of your heart.

“Let me get you another glass of wine,” suggests Jamie warmly.

“No,” says Marvin, managing a small smile back at him. “No, that’s okay. I’m going to bed. Good night.”

“Oh, yes. Good night, Marvin!”

Oh, yes. Pain and loneliness in the miles between them.

————-

A couple months after Henrik was stolen, there is something at their door.

You know it, I expect, if you are deep enough in this rabbit hole to be here. A blood-stained beach. Henrik’s blood, or so they’re left to guess. It doesn’t come by normal mail. It’s just there, one day, when Jackie came home late, exhausted but unharmed.

He’s thinking about how he would be more satisfied if he were harmed. Even just a little. Something to prove he’s getting somewhere. Something to prove to himself that he’s doing enough for his little brother. For his friend, his creator – oh, the way that Jackie loves Jack is another story of its own. Just a little harmed, he wishes, and then he’s angry at himself for thinking something like that. His world is falling apart.

He does his rounds of the house like he always does. Checks that Jameson’s door is safely shut. Peers through the crack of Chase’s room, and for a moment his heart stutters to find the bed empty, but when he races downstairs he finds two loving lumps curled up in Marvin’s bed together, Chase breathing thickly, comfortingly, into the wisteria and old book smell of his room. Jackie smiles despite his fatigue and traces downstairs for a snack.

Two minutes later, Marvin is slipping down the hallway to see why he’s crying.

Wish you were here.

It sears itself into Marvin’s brain in blue, green, white, and crimson red.

Henrik’s blood on the beach.

Wish you were here.

Jackie is crying so hard he makes no sound at all, crumpled against the cupboards of the house they bought when news of Chase made their family too big for their apartment – Jack being pregnant, they used to joke, and Jackie barks out a hysterical laugh, struggling for air, slamming his head back against the wood of the cupboard, back against the wood of the cupboard, back against the wood of the –

“Stop, stop, shh, sh!” pleads Marvin, rushing forward to pull his chest into the soft fabric of his sleep shirt instead, stroking his hair desperately. “Jackie, my Jackie, my Asteriscus, my heart. Sh, sh.”

He’s held him through meltdowns before, but this is a whole new level of overload for the both of them, and if Chase finds them curled up on the wood of the kitchen a couple hours later, he doesn’t see anything wrong. Marvin is still stroking Jackie’s hair. Squeezing his warm broad shoulders. Holding him.

Chase sinks to the floor beside them and takes the postcard gently from Jackie’s limp hand.

“Should we show them?” he asks after a long few minutes of the birds grieving the dying night from the trees.

“Who?” whispers Marvin, too tired to look at him.

“The eyes,” says Chase.

Marvin sinks his head down against Jackie’s chest.

“I don’t know,” he says. “No. Belief is a powerful thing. And we don’t know if their belief would help us find Henrik… or end him. Once we know he’s alive… then, maybe, they can see.”

Chase makes breakfast. Bagels toasted in the oven and slaughtered in butter and cinnamon and sugar. Grilled lemon lemonade with fat ripe strawberries for a side. He pauses to throw up in the kitchen sink. Puts on an air freshener. Steps back over Jackie and Marvin’s huddled bodies. “Your back must ache.” Sets the table and fries fat, drizzling strips of turkey bacon, cause Henrik didn’t eat pork, and here they are, still pretending he’s with them.

“Have to find him,” Jackie is groaning, maybe dreaming, maybe awake, clinging to Marvin’s shirt. “Oh, anything but this.”

——————

A few days later, Jackie has two announcements.

“No!” shouts Marvin after the first.

And then after the second, much louder:

“Fuck no!”

Jackie stares back at him impassively. If there’s one thing Marvin hates about him, it’s that he’s mastered the “Marvin’s being a drama queen so I’m going to be the responsible older asshole brother” face. He used to just shout back and then they would both freak out, avoid speaking for two days, and then float back together without addressing it again. Marvin loved it. Jackie always allowed him to feel vicious and uncaring. Now he thinks they have to be responsible. Adults in a loving family who talk things through in gentle voices without setting the kitchen on fire for the sixth time this month, especially since Chase took the batteries out of the fire alarm for his Xbox controller.

“Anti showed up within ten fucking minutes of his creation!” Marvin shouts, pointing at Jameson, who stares back at him with a stolen crystal gaze. “If you bring him to go see Jack, I bet Anti’s there in about ten seconds. The kid is a fucking demon beacon, Jackie.”

“Anti found him once and you blame him for it,” snaps Jackie, a little heat in his voice as he rises to defend his brother both literally and figuratively, stepping in front of a silent Jameson. “He deserves to know Jack just as much as the rest of us. For now, this is all we can give him. And anyway.”

Jackie turns to Jameson nobly, ducking his head down, and Marvin hates that, sees it, the way Jackie lets Jameson be taller than him, the way that Jackie acts like he’s the soldier to Jameson’s king, when Marvin used to be the only thing he was a proud protector of. Marvin and Henrik and Chase, not him. Now Jackie looks at him like he would do anything he asks, trusting that Jameson would ask no pain of him.

“Anyway,” he repeats gently. “We’re not in charge of you. If you want to go see Jack, you can.”

“That applies to him doing things like moving out and getting a job, not putting our friend in danger,” spits Marvin.

“I’ve made my decision, Marv.”

“Fuck your decision. You never listen to me anyway.”

“All you have left in you is vitriol.”

It leaves a silence between them.

Jackie looks down at the floor.

Guilty for saying it.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “But Marvin, I have to do what’s best for my family, and you’re only thinking about yourself.”

A stinging burn curls its way down Marvin’s esophagus, and then he feels it squirming beneath his collarbone, and then into his bony, pumping chest until it settles in his lava tummy. But he isn’t crying and he won’t. Used to be nothing ever made him cry. He’ll be that hard again if he has to. Universe just wants to break your fucking heart. Universe and everyone in it. Even the ones you think you can trust.

“I’m taking Jameson to see Jack,” says Jackie, turning to take his little brother’s small fond palm against his own. “And then tomorrow, I’m going to find Henrik alone.”

“No,” cries Marvin again. “Fuck no. No.”

Jackie holds up the blood-stained post-card, his eyes watering. “This is from a beach in Germany. I got a plane ticket. I’m going to go find him and Anti.”

“No!” screams Marvin, darting forward to grab him, taking his stupid, perfect red sweatshirt in his hands and shaking him, shaking him hard with hands that flame, but even this does not rouse Jackie to comfort Marvin by his familiar immature fury. He’s calm. Staring back at Marvin, gently thumping out the fire on his collar. “No, you won’t go! Not without me!”

“Marvin – ”

“Anti will just kill you too!”

“I have to do this! I have to find my little brother!”

“I’ve been scrying, Jackie!” Marvin howls, shoving him back against the wall, desperate, desperate, tearing at him. “He’s not there! I would have found him! Anti is setting up a trap for you! You won’t trust me! Henrik is not there and you won’t find him there and you know what? He’s probably dead already and you just don’t want to admit it.”

There! Jackie’s anger! There! Older than it was when they were boys, but still alive in his grieving chest, roaring like a fucking dragon!

“Don’t say that!” he screams, and he shoves Marvin away from him, his blue eyes wild and crying. “No, no, don’t say that! He’s alive and I’ll find him!”

“You want to talk about selfishness, Jackie?”

“Guys, stop!” cries Jameson.

“What, Marvin? What the fuck do you have to say?”

“Here’s what I think, if you’re actually listening for once – ”

“I have always listened and you were only ever angry and stubborn and – ”

“Have you even told Chase? Have you even told your other little brother, you know, the one that you might have forgotten about with as much as you dote on Jameson – ”

“Chase and Jameson and I all make time for each other and guess what? Yes, I did tell Chase, and he took it like a fucking champ like he always does. Supportive as fuck, Marvin. Chase is strong as leather, Marvin, he – ”

“Fuck’s sake, Jackie, I love Chase too but let’s not start telling blatant lies.”

“Marvin Jackson!”

“And you know why you don’t even want to take me with you? Huh?”

“I don’t want you to get hurt!”

“No, you don’t want me to share the victory. This is what it is, Jackie, this is the truth – you’re not going to Germany because you really think you can find Henrik and you’re not taking Jameson to Jack because you actually care about what he wants. You just need to feel like a good big brother. You need to feel like a hero. You need to feel like you’re doing – fucking – anything. Well, news flash, Jackie!”

He jabs his finger at his big brother’s face, panting with his own fury, staring into Jackie’s reddened whites, staring into his brother’s fear.

“You can’t do anything,” Marvin hisses. “And the sooner you accept that we are helpless – helpless – the sooner you can start putting yourself back together.”

Jackie’s watering eyes blink. Down come the tears, white and silver, gleaming pale on his skin. Drizzling into his thick, scratchy big brother beard.

He’s so much older than he was when they were created.

Marvin wants, suddenly, to touch his cheek.

The anger drains away.

Leaves Jackie looking terribly thin. Face hollowed.

Jackie touches Marvin’s wrist, the place where his veins split to go find his hand and fingers. Two soft, strong fingers brushing against his flesh. Jackie’s sacrifice of sensation – he hates the feeling of skin against his skin. But for Marvin – the pads of his fingers and the blue veins of Marvin’s thin white wrists.

“I,” says Jackie, with that maturity he’s gained. That age, that wisdom. That strength. Fuck him for growing up without Marvin. Fuck him for changing. Marvin loves him so much he would end worlds for him, but Jackie never asks anything of him. Jackie always leaves him behind and sacrifices himself first. It hurts every time. I’m tired of being a burden to you, thinks Marvin. I’m tired of you thinking I’m something you have to die for. I wanted to see you live.

“I can’t start viewing everything in the world as broken and painful just because you have,” says Jackie. “If putting myself back together means putting myself back together the way that you did after we lost them, then I don’t want to come back together, Marvin. The world… the world isn’t broken glass. Or if it is, then… you should let Jameson take you to see his church sometimes. The way they put that stained glass together… wow. Wow.”

Jackie’s mouth twists into a small, aching smile.

“It’s like you, little bro,” he says, touching Marvin’s chest, touching the buttons of his shirt. “Got some fucking fire inside of it. Fucking glows in the light. Fucking glows.”

He has a weakness for poetry.

He doesn’t know when Jackie learned to make love into lines like Neruda’s.

“Don’t want you to get hurt,” whispers Marvin, clinging to his brother’s sleeve, his red, charred sleeve. “Henrik isn’t there. Don’t go.”

“I have to go. I have to see for myself.”

“No. Trust me.”

“I can’t trust someone I don’t know,” whispers Jackie. “And you… you haven’t been my Marvin in a long time.”

The heat seems to wilt in Marvin’s chest.

That’s it, then.

He’s really going.

“Ready, James?” asks Jackie, reaching for him. JJ takes his hand and slides sympathetically past Marvin, quirking his mouth in a gesture of peace, but Marvin just stares down at the floor as his flame quiets, quiets, quiets.

“It’s a pretty nice hospital,” Jackie is explaining, already opening the door. “We can check in and we – ”

“Jameson’s in a fight club,” says Marvin.

Despite everything, it draws a startled snort out of Jackie. “What? Haha, a fight club?”

No one answers him. Marvin hears Chase’s door creak as his brother puts his head fully outside of his door upstairs.

“Jameson?” asks Jackie, chuckling, staring at him. “What? Come on… a… a fight club, that’s not… Marvin, come on.”

“Jackie,” says Jameson.

“Someone throw me a line here, I’m not good with – Chase, I know you’re listening! Are they fucking with me?”

Chase makes a noise like “ahhhhhhhg.”

“No,” he adds belatedly.

Marvin heads to his room, stalking past Jackie and Jameson, standing in the doorway and staring at each other, but he can still hear them talking, or Jackie at least. Jameson’s strep has made his throat so sore he can barely do more than rasp today.

“That’s not… true, is it? You’re – I don’t – I don’t understand…”

“Jackie, let me explain.”

“I just want to keep you safe and you’re… you’re… why didn’t you come to me if you wanted to learn to fight? Are you fighting with – what, just fists, right? Just fist-fighting, right, Jameson? You’re being safe, really safe?”

There’s a long silence, without even the rasping. A long silence.

Marvin swallows four of his sleeping pills without water and tugs his pillow over his ears to blot out the sound of Jackie falling apart – and then, an hour later, Jameson doing the same.

—————

Note on the kitchen table the next morning.

Look after Chase and JJ for me. Yes, Chase and JJ. They need you. I need you to be there for them. I hope you know you are still my little brother and always will be, even when we fight. You are still the sun to me. I love you, Marvin

There’s not a period at the end. Like it’s waiting for a finish. Waiting for something back.

“I love you so much,” Marvin types into his drafts, but he never does hit send. Cross-country texting fees, you know. They suck.

I love you, Marvin

Marvin sighs and buries his head in his hands.

Jackie plans to be gone for as long as he needs to. A week passes. Two.

Jameson’s voice comes and goes. His cough does not go at all.

And then he stops eating.

“Maybe I should take you to a doctor,” says Chase, touching his little brother’s forehead. JJ looks hungry and miserable, but he’s stopped touching much of anything, which, of course, sends Chase into a cooking frenzy. But no matter how many pecan pies or grilled goat cheese and strawberry salads or bowls of chicken alfredo with creamy fettucine he makes him, Jameson only takes a few bites before bursting into rasping, sore-throat praise of Chase’s talent.

Chase does not want praise. Chase wants him to eat. Marvin can see it in the way he paces around the house and the way he keeps coming back to the grocery list and even in the way his drinking slows down a little, with more important things to worry about.

“It’s just something stuck in my throat,” JJ insists wearily. “Just getting over that damned strep throat. A mild nuisance, Chase. If it persists til next week, we’ll go to see a doctor then, yes?”

“Okay,” agrees Chase, relieved. He kisses his head.

Today, Marvin is making a conscious effort not to be bitter about it.

It’s not Jameson’s fault he was created just after Henrik was stolen. And it’s not wrong for Chase to love him.

“Hey,” murmurs Marvin later that night, putting a hand on the small of Jameson’s back when he finds him sitting awake in the armchair, staring blankly at a screen playing episodes of a show with a bunch of animated baby bears. Right up Jameson’s alley. “Why are you up?”

JJ stares up at him, startled to find him checking in on him.

“Just having trouble sleeping,” he confesses, but he’s still beginning to smile, bright and sunny, because Marvin is being nice to him.

“You’re hungry,” Marvin guesses. “I’ll make you a smoothie. That won’t hurt, right?”

It will. It does. He sees the way that Jameson drinks it. It hurts so much he sees Jameson’s hands shake.

A small worm of anxiety noses its way around Marvin’s belly. That doesn’t seem right. Especially since he’s seen Jameson take punches, especially since he knows Jameson takes pain like a motherfucker, like a robot, like Jackie does. He wishes Henrik were here.

(Jameson, if you’re wondering, drinks the whole smoothie. Marvin made it for him. Marvin did! He drinks the whole thing down and his throat hurts so badly the next morning he does not bother rising from bed until the night comes. He needs something to distract himself. And they all have their vices.)

——————

One missed call from Tommy.

“Fuck’s sake,” he mumbles. “Gotta deal with this hot mess. Haven’t talked to him in two weeks and he calls me, you believe that, amata?”

He glances over, but Chase has fallen asleep in his bed, curled up into Marvin’s discarded sweater, breathing sweet and heavy. Marvin sighs and strokes his hair, smiling for a moment at the sight of his cute, dumb, dopey sleep face. Maybe he’ll draw a couple dicks on him.

His phone starts buzzing again, Tommy’s name coming up. Somehow it seems bigger than it was before.

“Don’t be leading these guys on,” Henrik would lecture him, shoving his feet off his lap at four in the morning. “So cruel to them. They’re trying to be nice so don’t hurt their feelings if they don’t deserve it. Don’t use the ones who aren’t trying to use you too.”

“All I’m doing is ghosting a little. He can handle it,” Marvin might say, smiling to be bantering with his brother, and Henrik would likely scoff, but never judge him for it, never hold anything against him. Just warn him – don’t be leading these guys on.

And Tommy was always good to him, and Marvin doesn’t think that he’d bother him for nothing. Would he? He can stand to give him a gentle let-down, he supposes. Not that he didn’t always like Tommy. It’s just that there’s no point in getting attached to anybody else. Hurts too much to lose them.

The phone goes off a third time. Marvin rolls his eyes but stands, leaving Chase behind to take the call in the hallway.

“Tommy?”

“Marvin!”

From the way he says his name alone, Marvin knows something is wrong.

“Tom? What’s – ?”

“Marv, I been trying to get through to you. Can you get down to that boxing ring I took you to?”

Something chills in Marvin’s blood. “Where my little brother fights?”

“He’s bleeding, man.”

“Fuck!” cries Marvin, racing for his room to get his shoes and coat on. “Is he okay? Take him to a hospital, Tom! How hard did he get hit?”

“Ah,” says Tom. “Well, that’s the part we are reluctant to take him to the hospital for.”

Marvin could grit his teeth to dust. “That little bastard. I knew he was fighting with knives!”

“He’s usually really good! He was off his game tonight and someone took a chunk out of his stomach.”

“A chunk?”

“A slice, a slice!”

“Put him on right now!”

“His voice is gone! All he’s doing is rasping.”

“Goddammit. Tommy, I’ll be right there. Tell him I’m coming and I – I’m going to handle it, everything’s fine.”

He hangs up and throws himself out the door, his coat flapping in the wind like the wings of a bird in a storm.

“That little bastard,” he says again, because he has to say anything other than, “no, no, not him, don’t let anything happen to him, my family cannot lose another brother and you are not here to be his doctor.”

——————

“Can you talk at all?”

Jameson blinks, exhausted, down at him.

“Sort of,” he says, in a voice like a wind without the strength to turn leaves over.

“Great,” mumbles Marvin. Jameson coughs, leaning over himself, clutching shakily at the wound slashed across his breast. “Who did this to you?”

“It was accident!” calls a man twice Jameson’s size, with a thick accent Marvin doesn’t recognize. “Little man is so speedy I think he’s going to jump back. He always jump back til today.”

“Why were you fighting while you’re sick?” hisses Marvin, taking off his coat to throw it over his brother’s blood-stained shirt. “I told you not to do that! Jackie begged you to stop this! He’s going to lose it when he finds out, Jameson!”

Tears well in JJ’s blue eyes. He shakes his head fiercely, water rolling down his reddened face.

“Of course I have to tell him,” Marvin snaps. “You shouldn’t have – fuck. Okay. Forget it. You’re going to be okay. I’m here. You ready to go to the hospital?”

“Trouble,” croaks JJ. “Knife fighting. Jail.”

“Okay. Look, maybe this is my fault for not teaching you, but in this family, when we have a suspicious problem, we lie. Yeah? Fuck the cops. No one’s going to get you in trouble. We’re very good liars in this family. Except Jackie, but he leaves it to me. So you do the same. You leave it to me, you can’t talk, and we’re going to tell them – you know what, fencing is fine! We’re fencers. Didn’t dull the blade and your, uh. Doublet fell down.”

Jameson blends pain, stress, and disbelief into one expressive canvas. Little brother powers. Unmistakable.

“Well, do you want to try some fancy – ” Marvin remembers to lower his voice at the last second – “time travel bullshit or are we doing this?”

Jameson shakes his head quickly, squeezing his hands into fists.

“Okay then, look at me, look at me.”

Marvin takes his head in his hands. Jameson stares obediently up at him, clinging to his coat around his shoulders.

“I know I’m not always good to you,” says Marvin. “But while Jackie’s gone, I’m your oldest brother, and I’m going to look after you, alright? You’re going to be fine. Come here, then. Just keep pressure on the wound. Thank you, Tommy.”

“Yeah, Marv, just let me know when he turns out okay, okay? You need a ride?”

“Tommy, you don’t have a car.”

“Oh. Yeah.”

“He’s really in to me,” whispers Marvin as they leave, and in the middle of everything, it makes Jameson laugh weakly, and somehow that, at least, feels right.

—————–

Alright. The wound’s not so bad.

Maybe Marvin even… overreacted a little bit.

JJ lost enough blood the doctor considers a transfusion, and, sure, Marvin wants to tear her teeth out one by one for daring to doctor to his family without being Henrik, but in the end she decides he’ll just need lots of rest and water and protein and Marvin decides to let her be. Jamie looks so tired he could keel over, but Marvin’s close enough that he could catch him if he fell, hovering at the foot of the little examination table, making sure he doesn’t go too white. The doctor stitches him up, cleans and bandages him, they discuss how to care for the wound, the doctor runs a physical, Marvin asks for her to check on his strep throat, she takes a sample, they discuss insurance, yada yada, home before Chase wakes up.

“Now I just gotta try to figure out how to tell Jackie,” mumbles Marvin, hovering over his phone on the couch. “He’ll kill us but it’ll be a noble death. Honest brothers and whatnot.”

Jameson’s head droops down onto his shoulder. Marvin jolts, but manages not to move him. For a long minute, he sits still.

Jameson falls asleep.

He’s warm and heavy. He breathes the way Chase does and his eyes flutter like Jackie’s when he’s dreaming. But still there’s something to him that is uniquely Jameson, something Marvin has had trouble seeing in the past. The way his hands drift towards him even in sleep. The way his hair curls so deeply and draws away from his eyes, still touched with a few soft strands of pretty teal. The flutter of long, languid eyelashes.

He doesn’t look so much like Henrik as he used to. He doesn’t look so much like Jack as he used to.

Marvin carries him to bed. Jameson sleeps through most of the day. Marvin endures one tense conversation with Jackie, who sounded stressed even before he was informed that his baby brother apple-of-his-eye light-of-his-life Jameson had been sliced like a Christmas ham. But he takes it well enough, only sending Marvin fifty-three follow-up messages throughout the day.

But everything’s fine. Everything’s fine.

“Marvin?” rasps Jameson’s tiny voice as the evening falls. “I got a weird voicemail from that doctor. I think we need to go back to the hospital.”

—————-

He does not ask Chase to come along. Just Marvin. There is no reason offered for this. When Marvin asks if he wants Chase, Jameson just shakes his head.

So they go together.

“Hi, Mr. Jackson, this is Doctor O’Hara from Mercy Central. We’ve run some tests concerning a sample you gave us and we’d like to discuss our findings with you in person as a matter of urgency. Please return to our offices at your earliest convenience and I or a colleague will be happy to sit down with you to discuss this. Thank you for your time.”

“And that’s it?” asks Marvin. “That’s the whole voicemail, you’re sure?”

Jameson nods, shifting in the hard plastic of the hospital waiting room chair. Marvin’s leg bounces furiously between them.

“Okay,” he says, and then again: “Okay. Okay.”

This is fine. This is totally fine. He’s fine. He just needs some medicine or like antibiotics or something or he’s got a really weird case of strep. Or something.

He’s fine.

He sees Jackie ducking his head in front of Jameson and talking to him in his eager, loving voice, full of adoration for him. He sees Chase cooking pasta and pies and spending hour after hour educating Jameson on everything he needs to know about the world. He sees Jack bent over his little notebook, working so diligently and so carefully on each and every one of them even though he knew that no matter what he did, no matter how much he cared about them, something would go terribly wrong at some point, in some way.

He sees Jameson’s head against his shoulder and magic books scattered across his room, wine on the porch and his small frame beneath Marvin’s own coat. He sees the distance between them, the distance so far between them, with Jameson, nevertheless, always stepping closer, closer, closer, holding out his small white hands.

“You’re going to be just fine,” murmurs Marvin, and he finds the courage to do something he never thought he would, and throw his arm around Jameson’s shoulder, tugging him closer to his body. “What did I say? I’m big brother right now. I’ve got you. I’ll take care of this for you.”

Jameson has no voice. Rasped and coughed and stressed it all away.

But he’s looking up at Marvin, and he’s smiling.

And his eyes aren’t Henrik’s.

He just looks like Marvin’s brother. Not one of the other ones. Just Jameson. Jackson. The family name Jackie shared with him. He just looks like JJ.

“You’re a nice kid. Bad things don’t get to happen to more of the nice people in my life,” says Marvin, stroking his hair once before pushing him away. “I’m going to look after you.”

Jameson nods. Jameson trusts him.

“Mr. Jackson?”

Dr. O’Hara took the time to see them herself. JJ and Marvin exchange glances and rise together, Marvin still close at hand to make sure he does not trip or faint, but Jameson is strong yet.

They don’t go to an examination room this time. They go to her office. The walls are dark wood. The floors are dark wood. The desk is dark wood. Jameson runs his hand over it, blinking around him. Fancy.

“Henrik’s office was nicer,” whispers Marvin, and JJ grins.

“How’s the wound, Mr. Jackson?” asks the doctor patiently.

JJ tries to clear his throat. Tries to clear his throat. Gestures soothingly at his wound and stressfully at Marvin, trying to get his voice out.

“He probably prefers just Jameson,” Marvin offers, and Jameson calms slightly. “And I think the wound’s pretty alright. Yeah?”

Jameson nods.

“Good, good,” she says, smiling tightly and setting a menacing dark wood clipboard down.

And then she tells them that Jameson has cancer.

Which is…

It’s. It’s. Okay. That’s. Sure.

Explains the voice. Explains the coughing. Cause it’s in his throat or something, she says. Well she’s more professional than that. sHe’s more – she’s more professional than thatt. Than that. Marvin is. Okay. Okay. Okay.

“What’s, uhhh,” he hears himself try to speak, and then he hears himself laugh, loud and scared, and Jameson isn’t moving beside him, hasn’t moved or spoken or looked around at all, just staring at the dark wood of the desk in front of him.

“What’s the prognosis?” he asks, his mouth smiling for a reason he can’t fathom, laughter bubbling in his chest. “What’s – is he – my little brother. My little…”

Marvin glances over at JJ. JJ doesn’t move.

“We’ll have to take some images to be sure,” says the doctor, folding her hands together. “But we’re reasonably sure of some good news – the cancer appears to be secluded to his larynx and hasn’t metastasized yet.”

“Okay. What does that mean?”

“Chemo should not be necessary.”

Marvin feels something cool pour down his chest. “Oh,” he says, letting out a breath. “That’s really good, right?”

“It’s great that we caught the cancer before it spread, yes.”

“But you still have to get rid of it somehow. Can he take medication?”

“This is the bad news,” says the doctor.

“I’m pretty sure you already told us he has fucking cancer,” says Marvin, and receives a look from the doctor, though she doesn’t seem angry.

“Jameson, we’ll have to remove the larynx to prevent the cancer from spreading.”

Marvin looks over at JJ. This time, JJ manages to look back, his eyes wide, and then he gives his small, annoyingly perfect smile, and turns shyly back to the doctor.

“I’m sorry,” he says, in his soft clean accent, in his rasping, malignant voice. “I’m confused. You mean my voicebox?”

“That’s right.”

“His whole voicebox?” asks Marvin, gripping the arms of the dark wood chair.

“Yes.”

And the silent stillness comes back to Jameson, and Marvin waits for his own thoughts to go all scattered and broken again, but instead he’s just fucking angry, very suddenly, so fucking angry he can’t breathe, he can’t breathe, but he can fucking shout and he will and he does.

“You can’t take my little brother’s voice!” he shouts, standing up. When did he stand up? “You just got this news and you’ve already decided to take his entire voice away? Before you’ve even done your imaging? My brother is a doctor and he would have already figured out another way, but you’ve just – we want a second opinion! Jameson, get up, we’re going to the other hospital, we’re going to – ”

“Marvin,” Jameson is saying, voice so broken Marvin hadn’t noticed until he looked down at him, and he tugs gently on his sleeve, looking up at him with blue eyes all his own, moved with a sort of calm that Marvin never really saw in Henrik’s eyes, moved with a power all his own. “Marvin. Don’t yell, okay? It’s okay. Sit down with me.”

He pats the chair gently, coughing softly.

“No,” croaks Marvin. “It’s not okay. Henrik would… Henrik would have…”

“It’s going to be okay,” says JJ. “Come on. It’s okay. We should listen to the doctor. I think Dr. Henrik would agree. I think it’s just a tough situation. Nobody’s fault. Nothing anybody can do. Sit down with me.”

Marvin sinks down into the chair beside him.

And he’s the one who sits in silence as JJ and the doctor talk quietly about details and diagnoses and prognosis and risks. Eventually Jameson needs a pad of paper and a pen as his voice disappears entirely once more. Marvin wonders if those were the last words he’d ever hear him speak – something about recovery time. Will I be able to go home to my family?

Fuck. Fuck.

Jackie asked him to look after him and this is what happened. He got cut open and it turned out to be a good thing, because Marvin wasn’t watching him closely enough, and if Jameson hadn’t been cut, no one would have taken him to the doctor until next week, and that might have been too late. That might have meant months of chemotherapy and spreading cancer. That might have killed him.

Marvin is never there on time. Marvin is never in time to save anyone.

“When will I need to have the surgery?” he sees Jameson write.

“As soon as possible,” answers the doctor, and her voice has gone softer than ever.

“How soon is as soon as possible?” mumbles Marvin.

She looks at him.

“We’d like to have it out in the next two days.”

Oh. Two days. The next two days.

Two days.

It’s only then that Jameson starts to cry.


	5. One More Chance

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I broke this chapter into two pieces and just posted them both at once :D  
> Trigger warnings in this chapter for cancer, hospitalization, and some medical gore such as puss and blood, but there is a part within the story that tells you when to skip if you need to skip.  
> Hope you enjoy!

Call to Astrifer: incomplete. Try again?  
Call to Astrifer: incomplete. Try again?  
Call to Astrifer: incomplete. Try again?  
Me: Jackie call me  
Call to Astrifer: incomplete. Try again?  
Me: Call me as soon as you get this right away  
Me: Jackie I need you  
Me: where are you I need you to call me  
Call to Astrifer: incomplete. Try again?  
Me: Jackie I’m not fucking kidding  
Call to Astrifer: incomplete. Try again?  
Me: fuck you fuck you fuck you fuck you  
Call to Astrifer: incomplete. Try –  
“Marvin! Stop fucking around in your room and come down here! We need to actually talk about this shit! Not your strong suit, I know, but you could give two fucks.”  
Me: Jackie call me back.  
Me: I’m scared  
“Coming!”  
Marvin pulls the blanket he’s been using to pretend that everything is normal over his shoulders like a cloak and hurries out of his room and down the hall, where Chase is sat with his glasses on and a tree’s worth of hospital brochures and informationals scattered at the table around him. Jameson is sitting beside him, looking pale and ill and too tired to talk about this anymore – well, Marvin supposes he won’t get to talk about much of anything soon – oh, come on, Marvin, for fuck’s sake –  
“It looks like the chances of it coming back are super low as long as the cancer hasn’t spread and they get it all out,” says Chase, scribbling down notes in a little book because that’s the only way he’s ever been able to keep track of anything, especially since the wound in his skull. “So it should all be okay. Cause, like, the bad shit that causes everything is gone, so… it doesn’t cause it anymore. Yeah?”  
Jameson sniffles, staring down at the table. Chase glances at him, at his notes, at Marvin, frantic and randomly pissed off.  
“Yeah?” he all but shouts, tears in his eyes.  
“Yeah,” says Marvin, sitting down on the other side of him, across from their little brother. Jameson doesn’t look up.  
“Motherfucking hospital,” bites Chase, tearing at his hair, and Marvin reaches carefully out to pull his fingers away from his scalp. Chase hardly seems to notice, flipping through some big information packet that all looks like gibberish to him, hot tears falling down onto the paper. “Fuck everyone but Schneep, that’s what I think. He should be here. Yeah? Yeah?”  
“You’re getting yourself worked up.” Marvin keeps his voice level. It isn’t difficult with Chase. He just wants him to be happy and he knows all his triggers and tells. “Stay low, amata, it’s going to be alright. Let’s focus on Jameson right now, okay?”  
Chase deflates like a popped balloon.  
“Yeah, yeah, yeah, of course,” he babbles, all his aggression sliding away into sympathetic misery. “Fuck, Jay. Fuck. It’s going to be okay. It’s going to be fine. We’re going to figure all this out. Yeah? Yeah, Marvin?”  
“Yeah.”  
“Why do they have to do it so damn soon? He doesn’t have any time to adjust.”  
“They’re worried about it spreading, amata, you know that. It would be a much bigger problem if it metastasized. Has Jameson read through all of this?”  
Jameson nods his head.  
“He was up all night. Couldn’t get him to sleep.”  
“Well, can hardly blame him for that,” murmurs Marvin.  
“He’ll be in the ICU for a couple days afterwards.”  
“Okay.”  
“After that we should be able to bring him home with some oxygen through a stoma and feeding bags.”  
“Okay.”  
“And then it’s just – recovery. I don’t know. Adjusting.”  
“Right.”  
“We talked about some of these other ways of talking, but he doesn’t like ‘em. He says he’ll just sign.”  
Jameson sniffles again and pushes a pad of paper towards Marvin, a fragment of a conversation he and Chase have already had. “Don’t want to have to explain it to people. Don’t want a robot voice or years of therapy just to barely speak. Just want to sign.”  
“That’s fine, then,” says Marvin. “And if you change your mind, we can talk about that then too. Whatever you choose is okay.”  
He expected to feel more overwhelmed, but he’s become surprisingly single-minded. All that matters is making sure Jameson is okay. They’ll pick the best options and work from there. All that matters is doing everything he can for him.  
“Did you have breakfast?” asks Marvin.  
JJ shakes his head.  
“Throat hurting?”  
JJ nods.  
“We could go get you hooked up to a feeding tube a day early if you wanted.”  
JJ closes his eyes and puts his head down on the table in front of him.  
“Come on,” says Marvin, getting up. “We’ll go get smoothies and at least give it a try. Chase, do you want to come with?”  
“I gotta figure all this shit out,” mumbles Chase, running his hands through his hair. “I gotta know how to take care of him, I gotta.”  
“I’ll get you strawberry something.”  
“Okay.”  
Marvin pauses to lean down and hold his face and kiss the top of his head, and Chase closes his eyes, his shoulders relaxing for a moment, and they share a second of comfort, as much as they can give.  
And Jameson sits slightly back in his chair, his eyes glazed, alone. Marvin sighs and moves to put a hand on his shoulder, encouraging him to get up. JJ doesn’t fuss or complain. He lets Marvin move him through the motions of getting dressed and putting shoes and a coat on, lets him put his arm through Jameson’s and lead him for a walk three blocks down until they can pick up smoothies in the middle of winter, wrapping gloved hands around them, getting Chase a Strawberry Mango Adventure.  
JJ stares down at his drink. It burns going down, but he eats it with a spoon – sucking through a straw hurts even worse – because Marvin wants him to.  
The whole time, Marvin is trying to think of what to say to him, but nothing substantial ever comes out.  
“It’s going to be okay,” he says, a few times over. “It’s going to be okay. We’ll help you get through this.”  
JJ looks up at him with something unreadable in his eyes. Today, he does not try to smile at Marvin.  
They stop outside the house.  
Holding smoothies in the freezing cold.  
“Are you going to be okay, Jameson?”  
“I’m scared,” he says.  
It’s the last words Marvin ever hears him speak out loud. His larynx is removed the next day.  
\---------------  
“You ready for this, Jamie?”  
Jameson stares up at Chase, clutching his brother’s hand, his eyes wide and terrified.  
“It’s going to be okay,” swears Chase, knocking their foreheads together, helping him settle into the hospital bed. “You’ll be out like a light for the whole thing and everything will be okay.”  
Jameson is holding on to his shirt, refusing to let go.  
“You gotta go, baby,” whispers Chase, squeezing his white palms. “You gotta go. I’ll be there when you wake up. I’ll be right there with you when you wake up and everything will work out okay. I love you. I love you better than anything.”  
Jameson needs Chase. Marvin watches and does not begrudge Chase that love he gives him. Jackie and Henrik did not complain when Marvin loved Chase better than he loved them. Jameson needs him.  
“I love you,” Jameson mouths without sound.  
“I’ll see you soon,” promises Chase. “My heart.”  
His black and white heart.  
He lets Jameson be wheeled away, and it is only then that tears well in those ocean eyes.  
Chase turns, sniffling, and Marvin is waiting with open arms to hold him.  
“Is he really going to be okay?” cries Chase, burying himself in his brother’s chest. “Marvin?”  
“Yes.” Marvin envelops him and feels his steady heartbeat. “Yes, my love, I swear to you.”  
“Okay.” Chase hides in his shirt. “Okay, Marvin. I trust you.”  
\------------  
Marvin never wanted to see one of his brothers in the hospital again. The weeks he spent sitting at Chase’s side, holding his hand while his little brother stared up at him with desperate, frightened eyes and struggled to speak were plenty for him, thank you very much.  
Jameson looks up at Chase instead of him, though, which is somehow worse, because Marvin – Marvin – Marvin – fuck.  
Reader, I have had too much to drink.  
Marvin gets to see up close and personal just how little he’s been there for Jameson.  
He regrets it.  
Reader, did I show it well enough? Did you know, reader, my friend, that Marvin loves Chase like nothing else? That Marvin loves Jackie, loves Henrik, loves his family, his friends? Did you know I can admit it easier than he can? My siblings brought me rosemary shrub and rich dark wine. This is the first time in my life I have been drunk.  
Marvin loves Chase.  
And even more, reader, you know, you do, you know – Marvin can feel it. Marvin can feel that Jameson is chipping away at his chest again.  
Jameson is taking another piece of his heart.  
How can he protest? When the boy has cancer, when he is resting in his hospital bed, staring up at the ceiling, grieving? All Marvin can do is regret. Reader, I have had too much to drink. Marvin has had too much of everything.  
He thinks love is something cold to make you dizzy. Love can taste like rosemary shrub or whatever that black alcohol-with-ice-cubes my brother brought me was. Bitter as fuck on his tongue, but goddamn. Goddamn. Rosemary. Jameson. Stop. You are taking another piece of my heart and you will not let me look after you.  
Chase is the one who won’t be taken from Jameson’s side, the one who sits beside him and strokes his hair as he sleeps, the one who holds on to him when he’s overwhelmed. Chase promised he would understand everything about how to take care of JJ and he does, and he’s good at it, and they love each other. At this point, Marvin figures you would be better off reading that story than this one, the story of Chase loving Jameson very much and Jameson loving Chase right back and soft sweet healing fluff where nobody calls anybody else a black and white replacement for Henrik who doesn’t belong in my family, goddammit.  
Not that Marvin has said anything like that in a while. Having cancer kind of makes it hard to insult someone. But honestly, now that he thinks about it, it’s been a while since he said something like that – or even thought it and really meant it. Sometimes as a knee-jerk reaction he’s bitter towards him, but really…  
Well, it doesn’t matter now. He should have probably maybe possibly perhaps been a little bit kinder to Jamie and now Chase is the one who can be there for him while Marvin stands around feeling useless.  
Here’s the odd thing though – “Jameson, why do you never tell Chase when you’re upset?”  
JJ’s eyes flicker up to him and then away. There’s something angry burning in the kid these days. Marvin recognizes it. He used to burn like that. Sometimes he still does.  
Jameson never answers him.  
But there’s one too many times when he seems to break down as soon as Chase has left the room. There’s one too many times where Jameson admits to pain or discomfort to his nurse but tells Chase everything is fine when he asks. There’s one too many times Chase starts trying to talk to him about what’s happening and Jameson, instead of staying and being comforted by him or talking about it, excuses himself to the bathroom and comes back a little red-eyed.  
He doesn’t want to upset Chase. So he won’t be upset when he’s around. He won’t. Jameson won’t show Chase when he’s hurting.  
Weird. Marvin can’t remember the last time he… related to JJ.  
“Where’s Chase?” asks Jameson.  
It’s Wednesday. A few days after his surgery. He’s doped up and, worse, despite it all – Marvin can see that he’s in pain.  
He’s had enough of seeing his brothers in pain. But there’s nothing he can do.  
“Do you need more pain medication?” he asks softly.  
Jameson sits on his bed, staring out the window beside him. Eyes dark and pained and grieving.  
“You look like you’re hurting.”  
“Chase,” writes Jameson, pushing a pad of paper towards him. “Chase.”  
“He’s been here for about three days straight, and hardly sleeping at home,” says Marvin. “I told him to stay home and sleep.”  
“Don’t,” writes Jameson. “Pretend that you care about me.”  
Oh, oh. What is Marvin supposed to say to that?  
Don’t look at me, magician. You got yourself into this mess. I am just the writer and I have had too much rosemary shrub. Chase is more sober than I am right now, most days, because he has more important things to worry about than alcohol, but Marvin?  
Marvin is just floundering.  
He wishes Jackie were here. And Henrik, too. They could fix everything. They could comfort him. Take care of him. And Marvin could do what he always has done for everyone excepting Chase, his amata, his love – Marvin could slip away and let someone else take care of it.  
Here in the hospital, though, there is only him and JJ, slumped back against his hospital bed, glazed with medication and breathing through a tube in a hole in his throat.  
There is no more backing down. There is no more retreating. There is no more holding back.  
Marvin puts his hand in Jameson’s.  
And he keeps his hand there through the tirade that follows.  
“You hate me.”  
Jameson scrawls bitterly against the pad. His eyes are duller than they should be, and yet the rage in them is a flashing, snarling thing, wounded and aching, lashing out. “You’ve always treated me horribly. I know you don’t want to be here. I know you don’t care about me. Go away.”  
Marvin does not release his little brother’s limp, exhausted hand. He will stay here.  
He has decided it.  
He will stay here and take everything he has to throw at him.  
He deserves it.  
And even if he didn’t – well.  
The only thing that matters right now is that Jameson does not feel alone. That Jameson does not feel unheard.  
“You told on me to Jackie,” he writes, and Marvin watches his shaking hands in silence. “You told me no one cared about me. You lashed out at me because you missed a brother I’ve never met and didn’t mean to replace.”  
Jameson is crying.  
Hot, dark tears down his cheeks. Shuddering in the hospital bed. Marvin feels his own eyes prick and he only squeezes his hand tighter, lying his head down on the mattress beside him.  
“You’ve always made me feel unwanted, unloved. An irritation. A burden. Now I’ve got cancer so you have to pretend to feel bad for a stupid little brother you never wanted. You never wanted me. Why are you pretending that you do now? Go away. I’d rather be alone than with you.”  
“I don’t believe that that’s true,” murmurs Marvin. “But if you really ask me to leave, I will.”  
Jameson stares at him, crying swift and bitter and silent, biting down hard on his lip to save his burning, wounded throat the pain of sobbing. His hands tremble against the writing pad. Marvin waits for him to continue, but in the end all he does is set the pen down and reach out to turn his morphine up instead, breathing out a shuddering sigh when the numbness thickens in his veins and exhausts him. He collects himself beneath the warm haze of the drugs and slumps back on his pillows, staring at the ceiling, white as a dove in a sepulcher.  
He doesn’t draw away from Marvin’s hand. Eventually, his eyes, ringed in blue and purple and fixed on Marvin, slide wearily shut. His mouth parts, his heartbeat slows, and he sleeps.  
“I don’t want to be someone who hurts you anymore.”  
Marvin isn’t sure he says it out loud. He knows for a fact that Jameson does not answer, and yet he could swear he feels a reply in the silent air between them –  
Too late to change that now.  
Isn’t it?  
He didn’t let go of his hand.  
Marvin closes his eyes, burying his face against Jameson’s bedsheets.  
He didn’t let go of his hand.  
Marvin takes the notepad carefully from Jameson’s sleeping stomach and leaves him a note.  
I am not a good person. I am not a good brother. But I hope, when you are ready, you will give me one more chance to be what you need me to be.  
For now, the best thing Marvin can do for Jameson is step back and let Chase take care of him.  
Call to Astrifer: incomplete. Try again?  
For now, all Marvin can do for any of them is nothing.  
He is never enough to save anyone.  
\--------------  
“Your hair’s getting long,” murmurs Chase, coming up behind him to put his chin down on Marvin’s shoulder.  
Marvin doesn’t answer, folding Jamie’s release form with tired, tense hands. He can feel the miserable tautness of his own lips and he brushes the long strands of hair irritably from his face.  
Chase leaves him alone again, letting him look over the pamphlet about home care one more time before he returns. Marvin jolts at the feeling of something hard touching his scalp – and a moment later, relaxes as he recognizes his own brush being carded through his hair.  
And Chase hums, and stands close to him, and brushes his hair.  
And they breathe at the same time. And Chase is warm and close.  
Marvin turns around and looks at him. Looks at his eyes.  
Do you still know I love you more than life itself? he wonders.  
Chase puts a hand on his shoulder and Marvin thinks, yes, he does.  
Here is one person I have loved well.  
“Okay?” asks Chase.  
“Yes,” says Marvin.  
He often gives this answer, but for now it is true.  
Yes. I have you. And Jameson is okay. Jameson is ready to come home.  
“Okay,” nods Chase, pushing his brother’s hair from his eyes and reaching around him to tie it back, neat and smooth. “Let’s go get him, yeah?”  
“Yeah,” murmurs Marvin, taking his hand.  
“He said something that kind of worried me the other day,” admits Chase as they head out to make the walk to the hospital, their hands still linked together.  
“Oh?” says Marvin, who has always listened to every one of Chase’s concerns, ever since he was created. The trust between them is deeper than light reaches in the ocean.  
“He said he’s really angry and he doesn’t know why or what to do with it. He says he keeps wanting to shout at me, or you, or his doctors, but he doesn’t really want to, and he’s just angry at no one and everyone at the same time. It’s probably normal, I guess, with all that he’s going through, but it’s not like him. Long as I’ve known him he’s only ever tried to make everybody happy.”  
Marvin bites down on his lip, squeezing Chase’s palm against his fingers, but only for a moment.  
“Chase, you know something?”  
“What?”  
“You already know what to do.”  
Chase looks over at him, mouth slightly parted, torn between confusion and being touched.  
“You’re his friend. You know him well. And you have always been a kind and loving brother. So if he starts taking this out on you, what do you do?”  
Chase pauses. Their hands swing together as they walk, boots landing side-by-side on the pavement.  
“Be there for him anyway,” he says finally, certainly, and if it’s more complicated than that, it doesn’t really matter, because this – this, the basis, the foundation – this is what is important.  
“Even if he changes or tries to isolate himself or hurts me a couple times. Be there for him anyway.”  
Marvin grins, nodding his head slightly. “Sounds pretty good to me, amata.”  
“Well, it should,” says Chase. “You’re the one who did that for me.”  
Marvin is smiling at the pavement, his cheeks hot, but not with that painful old fire that always seemed to be consuming him from the inside out.  
“This is too soft,” he grumbles, bumping into Chase with his shoulder.  
“Fuck you,” Chase obliges him warmly, and Marvin snorts and wraps his arms around his shoulders as the hospital rises into the air the next block over.  
“Yeah,” says Marvin. “Fuck you too.”  
There are many ways to say you love someone.  
They discover another one in the week that follows, a week that turns out to be even more difficult than the first, because Jameson’s fear that his anger will soon turn him against everything he’s known in his life is coming true in violent ways. Marvin feels like an outsider to all of it, and it burns, but Chase – Chase at least knows what to do.  
Be there for him anyways.  
“I know you don’t mean that” when Jameson tells him he doesn’t want him, he doesn’t even like him, he wants him to go away and leave him alone.  
“That’s not true,” when Jameson rails against all of them, when Jameson says that Jackie’s left them all behind and Marvin hates being stuck with the two of them and Chase probably won’t even bother to learn sign language for him.  
“Don’t be scared,” when Jameson cries over his lost voice, when Jameson smashes three of the plates in the kitchen in the middle of an anxiety attack, when Jameson wants to know if Jack did this to hurt him, if this will make the others love him less, if no one will want to be his friend or his partner, if he won’t recover, if the hole in his throat is revolting, if he won’t find a job.  
And “stop, stop” – so softly velvet could not compete, so soft as to make bellies for birds, so soft a quiet wind could disperse it – “stop, Jamie, baby brother, here I am,” when Jameson beats his hands to shreds against the trunk of one of the trees outside. Jameson is sobbing. Chase takes his wrists and pulls his bloodied knuckles to his shirt to clean them off, staining red the grey fabric.  
“I’m sorry,” signs Jameson. “I’m sorry.”  
It was one of the first signs he learned. For days he was so weak he couldn’t walk. He has to be monitored on his pain medication, his mental health is a car wreck, he needs help with his feeding tube and stoma and oxygen and bandages, everyone has to wait for him to write to speak, and he’s so, so tired all the time. He feels like a burden.  
“It’s alright, it’s alright, don’t apologize for this,” whispers Chase. “Your poor hands. Let’s go back to the house and clean these up. Okay? Come on.”  
“I’m sorry for being angry.” He’s trying to write it with bleeding hands and shaking fingers. “I’m sorry for taking it out on you.”  
“I forgive you for taking it out on me, but you don’t have to be sorry for being angry. I just want to be here for you. That’s all. I just want to make sure you’re not alone. You can tell me everything, Jameson. You are not alone and you always have my love.”  
Marvin hears him, murmuring those reassurances to him in the bathroom as Chase cleans and bandages his hands the way Henrik taught him and Jameson weeps for the first time in days. Is crying an improvement on screaming and breaking things?  
Going to Chase instead of turning everything into rage is, at least, Marvin figures, standing outside that door, wondering if he should go in, crying quietly on his own in the hallway.  
If he had been a better big brother, Jameson would have been able to come to him too.  
Instead, all Marvin can get from him is anger. He made it worse. He knows that. He was a cold brother. All this angry fire, and he was just a snowstorm to his littlest brother.  
“I’m here for you,” promises Chase. “Marvin too.”  
Marvin closes his eyes. Jameson writes an answer back, but Marvin doesn’t hear what it is.  
One more chance. Give me one more chance to be your brother.  
JJ and Chase fall asleep in front of the tv, watching a cartoon to calm down, holding on to each other.  
Marvin cleans the blood from the carpet.  
This is all he can do.  
Until two nights later.  
\---------------  
Marvin wakes up to an odd huffing noise from the bathroom.  
He’s so sleepy he just lies in bed for a few minutes longer, hoping the problem will resolve itself before he has to be disturbed from his rest. He feels like a dragon who spent a couple centuries hoarding gold and is now ready to just sleep on top of his treasure for the next, oh, hundred years.  
His phone buzzes.  
Jackie! He sits up to grab it. But it’s just an update on terms of service for his nerd-ass poetry of the day app. Goddamn.  
More huffing from the bathroom catches his attention, louder now, faster. A soft choke cuts through it. Marvin gets to his feet, worried.  
“Chase? You throwing up? I’m coming.”  
But there’s no answer from the bathroom but more rapid huffing.  
“Hey. JJ? Chase? I’m coming in, okay?”  
No one replies. He pulls open the bathroom door, glad to find it unlocked.  
Less glad to find the scene he sees inside. Reader, are you squeamish? Now is the time to move politely down the mess of words I’ve presented to you if you are. Because Jameson is bent over the sink, his oxygen pipe discarded on the counter as he tries to clean out his stoma for the day, and his hands are slicked in puss.  
“Motherfuck,” swears Marvin, moving forward to try and help him.  
It’s his chest that’s making the huffing noise, trying to get air in through the dark, open hole in his neck. Meanwhile his mouth sucks in unhappy breaths to no avail – his laryngectomy severed the connection of his windpipe, and now, with the stoma pussing, Jameson can’t get enough air in, leaving him huffing in the bathroom, his eyes wide with horror, trying frantically to clean the unpleasant discharge from the hole in his throat.  
“Let me help,” soothes Marvin, reaching forward, and to his credit, the thought of the puss – oh, no, and a little blood, too – does nothing to dissuade him, not for a moment. Marvin can be selfish and cold and defensive and even cruel, but he is no coward when the stakes are high. He’ll do what Jameson needs him to do. He wets a washcloth and hurries to wipe the mess away from his brother’s throat.  
Jameson thrashes his head, still huffing, trying to push his hands away as his eyes well up with bitter tears.  
“Look, I know what you said, that we don’t have to pretend to be friends,” mumbles Marvin, moving insistently forward, mopping at his throat. “But you need help and I’m here, okay?”  
Jameson scrambles for his pad of paper, smearing blood and puss across the paper.  
“Chase,” he writes.  
“Chase is asleep. Can’t you just let me do this?”  
“Chase.”  
Jameson gags and Marvin is afraid he’ll throw up with the inside of his throat still healing.  
“Should I call the hospital?”  
Jameson pushes him away and scrabbles at his q-tips, determined to clean the stoma himself.  
“Jameson!” snaps Marvin, grabbing his chin between his hands. His little brother whirls on him, huffing miserably, tears sliding down his cheeks.  
“It’s going to be okay,” Marvin murmurs. “Just… let me. Please. I’m sorry for how I’ve treated you. Give me a little forgiveness. Just enough to take care of you. That’s all.”  
He takes the q-tip from him and soaks it in hydrogen peroxide for a sterilizer. Jameson stares at him, blinking tears away, so exhausted his eyes are shadowed like the bellies of birds.  
“Sit down, okay?” asks Marvin, pushing him gently towards the tub. “Lean back and I’ll help you.”  
Jameson’s mouth moves for a moment like he’s trying to say thank you, his eyes closing before he goes to sit back on the tub, and it is only now that Marvin sees the shame in his face.  
“Don’t have to thank me,” says Marvin. “I’m here.”  
Jameson nods slowly, sniffling, and lets his head lean back, exposing the dark wound of the stoma. Marvin cleans away a crust on one side with the first q-tip before replacing it with a soft soap and water cottonball and beginning to get rid of the rest of the puss and the blood, dislodged by Jameson’s frantic attempts to fix it. His little brother heaves in a breath with his chest and relaxes a little, hot water still dripping down from his eyes, clutching at Marvin’s shoulders. Marvin makes eye contact for a moment and despite everything, Jameson tries to give him a small smile when he sees his eyes.  
Marvin sighs and rubs his thumb across the muscles of JJ’s neck. “Okay, sit up a little. There’s something stuck here at the back.”  
“I could deal with all of it if I didn’t have to do this,” Jameson writes off to his side, almost without having to look anymore. Marvin grimaces at the state of the pad. He’ll get him a fresh one in a moment and clean his poor hands and pen.  
“Well, you don’t have to, alright? Chase and I are happy to help you with it.”  
“Gross. Embarrassed.”  
“It’s just a part of all this,” says Marvin, trying to be gentle and finding it surprisingly easy. “It’s like you said. Not anybody’s fault, not anything we can do about it. Just got to make the most of it.”  
“Want it gone. Okay to lose my voice. Hate this hole.”  
His ‘e’ squiggles off in alarm as Marvin pushes at the clot in the back of the hole and Jameson chokes again, a sob falling out of his mouth. Marvin tenses, trying to stop it from falling down his windpipe. “I got you, I got you.”  
“Want it gone,” repeats Jameson, beginning to cry in earnest and underlining the phrase again and again. “Want it gone, want it gone.”  
“This is what’s letting you breathe. You have to give yourself time to adjust to it. Sh, sh, it’s okay, it’s okay. I’m sorry, does this hurt? Try to stay calm. There, I think I got the – um.”  
Marvin blinks at the stoma. He’s managed to get the clump out, but now the skin is… changing?  
Growing?  
“Jameson?” asks Marvin, alarmed. “Um. Why is the stoma closing?”  
It’s not supposed to close. It’s a medical cut in his throat and he’s spent all day with his tube inside it, keeping it open. Even if it would heal, it shouldn’t be healing this quickly.  
Marvin looks up at Jameson. His eyes have gone distant and confused, his face losing color rapidly. “Bud?” says Marvin, taking his h – his hands!  
“Jameson, stop!” screams Marvin. “You’re closing the stoma!”  
His veins are alive with silver light from his fingers to his wrists and climbing steadily higher up his arms. Marvin can smell rainfall and old wood. JJ doesn’t cast exactly the way he does, but this – Marvin knows what magic looks like. Marvin knows what time magic looks like.  
Jameson stares at him, eyes enormous. His hand presses back onto the paper, trembling. “Didn’t mean to. What’s happen – ”  
Before he can finish the word, the hole in his throat has closed.  
The hole in his throat that lets him breathe. Jameson’s hands close around the healed stoma, chest heaving uselessly, silently, airlessly.  
“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” gasps Marvin, grabbing his chin again. “Okay, okay, okay. Big brother’s here. It’s okay, here I am. Magic problems? No worries. This is my specialty, okay, baby? They don’t call me magnificent for nothing, okay? I just gotta – I gotta – okay, okay, okay.”  
“Marv?” comes a sleepy voice from the hall, and then the door to the bathroom swings back open. “I heard you shouting. What’s going – what the fuck!”  
“Call an ambulance!” shouts Marvin. “Now, Chase! He can’t breathe!”  
Chase nearly trips in his haste to go get his phone from his room, the image of Jameson choking seared into his mind.  
“Stay calm, stay calm,” soothes Marvin, petting his little brother’s hair. “Tell you what, this is all fine. You undid something, right? You’re incredible, JJ. That’s really, really powerful magic. Jack and Jackie were right about you after all. Good job. So now, since you undid something, I just need you to redo it. Okay? Can you do that?”  
His hands are shaking so hard he can barely write, but Marvin admires how calm he’s trying to be, how measured. His chest keeps jerking in an attempt to get air, but he isn’t hyperventilating.  
“How?”  
“I – I don’t – can you just do the same thing b-but… forwards?”  
“How do you do magic?”  
Spells. Poetry. Spoken aloud. Marvin feels tears stinging their way down his cheeks and he curses himself for not being calmer.  
“Scared,” writes Jameson, staring at Marvin, muted and suffocating. Marvin didn’t know anyone’s eyes could be so big. His lips are changing color.  
“It’s okay, it’s okay. Sh, sh, just – just – ”  
“Hi, yes, I need an ambulance.” Chase is beside them again, pulling Jameson’s head against his stomach, stroking his back. “Please, please hurry. My little brother had his larynx taken out last week and now he’s not able to breathe. What the hell happened, Marv?”  
“Time magic,” Marvin manages. “He closed his stoma and I don’t know how to help him undo it.”  
“Oh, no, oh, no. Yes, I can give you the address.”  
“Stay here with him.” Marvin leaps to his feet, tearing out of the bathroom, ignoring Chase’s shout of surprise.  
They all know the ambulance won’t get here in time. Well, maybe JJ doesn’t, because for whatever reason he wasn’t born with an innate understanding of things like cars and phones and the fact that it’s weird to put fat on your toast like the rest of them. One way or another, he has only a couple minutes before he suffocates, and they’re farther than that from the hospital. Marvin knows. Wouldn’t be his first time in an ambulance to Mercy Care.  
He doesn’t know how to help JJ undo this with his magic and he doesn’t have a spell ready for it. Magic won’t help him. And when magic failed, there was always someone else in their family who had another method to suggest.  
Henrik wouldn’t be thinking about magic right now.  
Henrik would be cutting Jameson’s throat back open.  
Marvin tears open the medical bag still tucked beneath his abandoned bed and throws aside bandages and a stitching kit, painkillers and gauze. Sheathed in a plastic case, he finds Henrik’s silver scalpel, glittering as he holds it up.  
He can do this. He won’t be late this time.  
Jameson is in Chase’s arms in the bathroom, not just shuddering with his attempts to breathe, but fucking seizing, his chest jolting like he’s being electrocuted, his blue mouth hanging open, drool dripping down his cheek, staring up at Chase as he begins to die. Marvin falls to his knees beside them, barely listening to whatever it is Chase is saying about magic and the ambulance and you need to write it again, you need to write it down again, Jameson, here, write that you want it to open again, wait, Marvin, don’t!  
Marvin has the scalpel against the flesh of Jameson’s throat, ready to push into his skin when Chase grabs his wrist. “Let me try one more thing!” he howls, shoving Marvin back and picking up the filthy notepad. “Come on, JJ, come on, one last thing, little man, just try it.”  
Chase puts the pen in Jameson’s shaking, silver-veined fingers and helps him press it to the pad of paper. Jameson’s blown pupils fixate desperately on the pad and he tries his damnedest to write, his discolored mouth twisting and his chest heaving so hard his back arches off the floor.  
“I want it open again.”  
Jameson is making the worst noise Marvin has ever heard, a horrible, useless wheezing noise, and Marvin is not going to cry, does not even have the desire to; his hands are burning so much the metal in his hands must be scorching. He needs to cut his little brother’s throat without hitting anything vital, replicating the stoma. He has been late too many times in his life. This time he will not be late, not even if this is the most terrifying thing he’s ever considered doing. He takes Jameson’s neck in his hand again and draws back the scalpel –  
The skin parts on his throat, opening into a dark hole, clean and unbleeding.  
Oh, fuck. It’s okay. Jamie did it.  
Marvin drops the scalpel and crumples to his hands and knees, his hair falling down around his face. Chase is hiding in Jameson’s chest as their little brother just breathes, and breathes, and breathes, and breathes. Their arms wrap around each other. Chase still has the phone pressed to his ear and he’s stiff with shock, clinging to JJ.  
“Marv?” he croaks.  
“I’m okay,” stammers Marvin. His heart is pounding in his chest so fast that it makes him shake. “I’m okay.”  
“Saw what was on the paper. That he’d written already. So I figured. Yeah.”  
“Smart,” pants Marvin. “Smart. That was really clever, Chase. Smart. Yeah. Yeah.”  
Chase isn’t even crying. Too surprised. That’ll take some time to cope with. Marvin puts his hands around his mouth and nose and screams for a moment into his hands.  
“That! Was! Fucking! Horrible! Fuck!”  
Muffled against his skin. Jameson is crying into Chase’s chest, low and mournful, getting his breath back. Chase curls around him, too shell-shocked to speak any comfort to him.  
Someone’s knocking on the door. “Paramedics,” Marvin coughs, getting to his feet, dizzy for a moment. “Pull his sleeves down low. Hide the silver.”  
He lets the paramedics in and he lies. It’s one of the things he’s good at. Something about Jameson getting a clot in his stoma and everyone freaking out a little. Can you please take a look at it? The paramedics seem to recognize that they’ve just been through an actual crisis, imagined or not, and they couldn’t be nicer about it, sitting Jameson up and checking his heartrate and pupils and everything. They clean his stoma professionally and then re-explain how to do it to everyone involved without condescension. Marvin wishes he could appreciate it, but he’s just slumped back against the cupboards beneath the sink, dead-eyed and staring, with Chase similarly paralyzed on the wall across from him and Jameson slumped, exhausted, against the tub. And then, eventually, the paramedics are gone, and it’s just the three of them, sitting.  
“Fuck,” whispers Chase, running his hands over his face.  
“You okay, JJ?” asks Marvin.  
Jameson gives him the most apathetic thumbs-up he’s ever seen. Exhausted.  
“We’re going to bed,” mumbles Chase, getting slowly to his feet and reaching out for his little brother. “You’re staying with me, I’m not taking my eye off you tonight.”  
“I’m okay,” he writes in small letters.  
“Please, James. I’m freaked the hell out. I want to be able to hear you breathing next to me.”  
“Okay.”  
“Okay. Come on. I got you. Let’s get you washed up a little, and then, uh. Marv?”  
“Yeah, I’ll clean up, honey, I got it.”  
He listens to them slipping off down the hall and into Chase’s room. Chase always leaves the door open behind him.  
And Marvin just sits there, for a long time.  
Call to Astrifer. Incomplete. Try again?  
Goddammit, Jackie.  
Please be okay.  
Why didn’t he teach Jamie magic like Jackie asked?  
To be fair he has no idea to teach something like that. He barely even practiced himself, he kind of just… found it.  
Ran away for a little while. Took a couple trips on his own. Read a shit-ton of poetry. Learned a couple languages. It’s not, like, hard. This is JJ’s fault!  
Okay, no, fine, it isn’t.  
And maybe he’s kind of crying because that – that sucked. That was really fucking scary.  
He could have lost JJ right there. He really could have held him as he died right there. He would have had to tell Jackie. He would have had to know he never even tried to help him learn how to control that time shit whatever the fuck. Bullshit time magic. Nobody can use time magic. Jack, what the fuck?  
He gets up and he cleans the bathroom of blood and puss. If he’s going to be such a shitty big brother he might as well clean the fucking bathroom. Can’t help JJ. Can’t protect Henrik. Can’t make Chase stop drinking. Can’t get Jackie on the phone. And how hard did he even try? He wasn’t even there for them half the time. He turned his back on them half the time. He looked away.  
He could kind of use a hug.  
Chase would probably let him sleep in his – no, JJ’s already in there.  
Maybe they still wouldn’t mind.  
Come on, Marv. You’ve been a dick. JJ doesn’t want you sleeping with him.  
But then he’s such a nice little person.  
Marvin sighs and slinks towards Chase’s room, shivering in his pj shorts and an over-sized t-shirt which once belonged to Jackie, he thinks. He creaks open the door and looks down at his little brothers. They’re curled up with their faces close together, huddled against each other’s chests, already breathing deep and even. Chase’s hair is a mess and JJ is halfway buried against his chest, curled against him for warmth.  
That’s cute shit. Marvin would probably snap a picture if he wasn’t so tired. He closes the door gently behind him and moves close, pausing before he decides to step around the bed and slink his way onto Chase’s side to curl up against the wall.  
A hand reaches out and grabs his shirt before he can make it. He startles and looks down at JJ, blue eyes cold in the moon.  
Jameson tugs on him, his mouth moving with words he can’t speak anymore, his eyes weary and warm.  
Weary and forgiving.  
“Okay,” he mouths, and pats the bed beside him.  
Marvin sniffles, brushes the last of his tears away, and sinks into bed beside him, squishing them in tight on Chase’s queen mattress. JJ grins as he is trapped between the two of them, reaching out to throw blankets over Marvin’s legs and chest, patting comfortingly at his shoulder. Marvin sighs and puts his head down on the pillow, looking at him. Listening to his breathing. Jameson puts a hand over his big brother’s heart and lets him look, his mouth fond and accepting.  
“Okay?” whispers Marvin.  
JJ nods and brushes his fingers across his dark beard.  
“I’m sorry.” Marvin can feel his eyelids drooping already. “I should have prepared you for something like this.”  
JJ just shakes his head and touches his heart again.  
“What do you think about taking a trip tomorrow?” asks Marvin.  
Jameson blinks and tilts his head.  
“Trust me?”  
There’s a slight hesitation in his eyes.  
And then he nods, slow and sure, and the hesitation clears away.  
“I’ll take you somewhere nice,” murmurs Marvin. “We’re going to figure this all out.”  
He finds a little courage that night, lying there, looking at him.  
He wraps his arms around Jameson’s waist and he hugs him to his chest. Slowly, lovingly, JJ hugs him back. Wraps his long white arms around him, marked with the long line of the tattoo they all share, and touches his back.  
Chase flops over in his sleep and throws his arm over the both of them, smacking Marvin in the face, and Marvin and Jameson dissolve into soft laughter together, giggling side by side in the darkness, listening to each other breathing, moving, alive.  
Here I am.  
Breathing against your palm.  
Here I am.  
I forgive you.  
\----------------  
Can I tell you something, reader?  
Jameson has wanted a chance to forgive him for months and months and months.  
He stays awake long after Marvin and Chase have fallen asleep, just because he’s happy to be squished in between them at last.  
He has always wanted to be loved by Marvin.  
I’m going to be okay, he thinks, and for the first time in two weeks the bandages on his throat are forgotten, and the silence that surrounds him seems kind and warm. I’m going to be okay.  
Marvin is holding him.


	6. Oh Damn It's a Happy Ending

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> okay here's the second part of that chapter! (i've added two today so make sure you're caught up!) There is a tw for internalized homophobia in this chapter.  
> Thank you so much for reading <3 I hope you liked it and that I made up for all the angst with sweet fluff haha :) you can find me on tumblr under the same username.

“Going on a trip, in our favorite rocket ship!”  
“I’m going to kill you.”  
“Zooming through the sky!”  
“You do not have to come. I could leave you on the road right now.”  
Chase laughs and lets his head fall down against the glass of the rental car, looking across at Marvin. “This is cool of you, Marv. I’m only a little jealous you’ve never taken me on your annual magical adventures before!”  
“And I never will again, you little twerp,” says Marvin, reaching over to punch his leg. Chase pretends he’s been mortally wounded, groaning in agony and curling over his thigh, his face taut with pain.  
“No! Not like this! I have a family, Marvin!”  
“You two,” scolds Marvin, sparing a glance for their little brother, asleep in the back, looking small and pale with his neck brace back on to stop him from being jostled too much. “Little actors.”  
Truth be told, he never thought that he would under any circumstances invite anyone other than a date along with him on this sort of a trip. It was private for him. Magic was something none of his brothers shared with him until now. It was just his, or his and Jack’s, a piece of his creator no one else was offered. If Anti has anything like what he has, it was stolen, not given. It was just Marvin’s. He never even told Jackie and Henrik where he was going or when he’d be back. He’d just go.  
But JJ needs this. Needs him. And Marvin wouldn’t ask Chase to leave him right now, with fear still lingering over them. It would be like asking Jackie to leave Marvin after he’d just been injured.  
Marvin looks over at Chase. Could his little brother be like Jackie to Jameson if it were just the two of them? He isn’t a fighter, but he is one of the most passionately caring people Marvin has the privilege to know, and he loves Jameson. But Marvin’s so used to thinking of Chase as someone who needs to be looked after and protected. He shouldn’t be anybody’s big brother.  
Jameson stirs in the back, looking heavy and tired with pain.  
“Hey,” says Chase, turning to touch his knee. “We’ll stop for lunch soon, okay? Doc said you were allowed to drink stuff now, yeah? Doing okay? You can take your meds a few minutes early if you want to.”  
JJ gives him a thumbs up and manages a smile for him. Chase grins back, squeezing his knee, and something silent and powerful passes through them before Chase’s phone starts vibrating.  
“Oh, it’s her. I’m gonna get this. I'm chill, I'm chill. Okay. Hi, Stace! Yeah, no, he’s doing alright. Still pretty sore, I think, but he’s pretty fucking tough.” He smiles at Jameson in the rearview. “Just a couple days, uh-huh. Oh, hey, I saw the cutest kid’s book about BSL. I’m going to send it to you guys, yeah? Hey, I was thinking…”  
Marvin tunes him out and takes a breath in to steady himself. Maybe Chase could be like Jackie if he needed to be after all. Maybe it’s just that Marvin seems to be the only one of his brothers who isn’t growing up as the months go by. Maybe someday they’re all going to look at him the way Jackie looks at him – like he sees something in him that Marvin isn’t sure will ever emerge.  
He used to think maturity was being able to survive on his own. These days, he’s starting to think it’s being able to trust other people to help you when you need them.  
And that sounds so much harder.  
“It’s not such a long drive,” he promises Jameson, turning to him to distract himself as Chase says his goodbyes to Stacy, the two of them finally finding a way to get along. “Usually I go all the way up to Norway, but I don’t want you to have to do too much traveling, so this year we’re just going to Scotland.”  
“If ye had the chance to change yer fate,” says Chase immediately.  
“Chase, I’m going to kill you.”  
“WOODJA?”  
Okay, maybe mature isn’t quite the right word for Chase yet after all. Marvin punches his leg until Chase’s groans of pain are genuine and looks into the mirror to see Jameson laughing and signing the word “bear.”  
Marvin recognizes it. He can tell what he’s signing. Suddenly warmed, he feels his mouth curl into a smile and carefully signs “bear” back at his little brother.  
“Brave,” says JJ. "Movie. Girl. Bear."  
“Brave,” Marvin repeats. “Brave.”  
They’re learning.  
Maybe Marvin is growing a little too.  
\--------------  
Cairngorms National Park is hills and trees and water and aching, stretching, rolling hills. Reed and bristle stand strong in the cold air as the trees sway, still green as summer even in the January winter. Scotland feels wild out here and Marvin can breathe. Marvin can breathe.  
“Are we going camping?” asks Chase.  
“Of course not,” says Marvin. “The outdoors are disgusting.”  
“Oh, Marv.”  
“What?”  
“I don’t know, I just love you.” Chase grins at him and Marvin flushes, reaching out to push him gently away, smiling at the sound of his laughter.  
“I got us a little kitschy rental cabin a mile up the road. Already texted you the details. You can go set up there, amata, okay?”  
“What? Wait, you’re ditching me?”  
Marvin pulls his head close and kisses both of his cheeks, ignoring his grumbling. “Magic siblings only, my darling.”  
“This is Muggle discrimination.”  
“We’ll be back in a couple hours.”  
“It’s already so late. JJ, aren’t you exhausted?”  
JJ is standing with his backpack over his shoulders, staring down the bluff. He looks up at the sound of his name and gives Chase a thumbs down, smiling. “Sleep. Car.”  
Chase shifts uneasily from foot to foot, nervous to be away from him after how difficult the last few weeks have been. “You’ll be careful, right, amata?”  
Marvin blinks, turning his eyes up to his brother’s worried face.  
He’s oddly warmed by the word.  
Maybe once it would have made him angry – the thought that Chase has taken something that was just for the two of them and used it for someone else. But now… now it feels like Chase has taken the love between the two of them and offered to share it with someone new. With Jameson.  
Marvin thinks he might be okay with that. Love doesn’t divide when you share it, he thinks. But he supposes he knew that the first day he let Henrik be his second brother, and he and Jackie shared a brotherhood made for two with a third.  
“Yes,” knocks JJ, stepping over to give Chase a hug.  
“Okay. Alright. Have a nice time. Call me if you need anything at all, alright?”  
“See you later, Chase. Don’t wait up for us.”  
Marvin leads Jameson through the park, carrying blankets and snacks and a torch just in case. But when the time comes, he doesn’t really think they’ll need it. He can tell tonight is a good night for it. He can feel it.  
Jameson can too.  
Marvin sees it in his eyes, wide and staring. Beyond the cold and beautiful hills, between the still water of the loch, within the breath of the wind – something more powerful than the normal magic of the world.  
“It’s already in your fingers,” chuckles Marvin, pausing to take his hands as they walk. JJ is momentarily distracted by staring at Marvin, reaching up as if to touch the blue of his eyes, which is glowing unnaturally, ethereally, in the dark night. But then he startles to see the tips of his fingers beginning to show that faint silver veining, a glow beneath his skin. Soon it will be stronger and farther along his wrists.  
Jameson gives a small groan and clutches his hands together, looking up at Marvin with his eyebrows folded.  
“Oh, don’t be afraid,” Marvin is quick to reassure him, worried. “Hey, it’s alright. What happened the other night isn’t going to happen again. This isn’t something to be scared of. It’s a part of you. That’s why it’s right here in your blood.”  
“Eyes?”  
Marvin touches his temple beside his fiery eyes. “Shows up differently for everyone. Come on, let’s keep going. I want you to have a good view.”  
“Where?”  
“Come on.”  
He doesn’t let go of his hand. They step carefully through the woods together, Marvin listening always for the sound of Jameson becoming over-exerted or coughing. But he’s holding it together. Soon, he’ll be off feeding bags, and they’ll move him to a liquid diet, and one day the scar in his neck will just be that – a scar, and the clean hole beneath it, and his hands speaking in his mouth’s stead. He’ll recover. He’ll be okay. He has to be.  
He leads him down to the loch, where the trees back away and they notice that they are not nearly the only ones here – the banks are dotted in campers with tents, all wrapped up besides space heaters or fires, chatting and staring up at the sky. Jameson glances at Marvin, confused, and helps his brother spread out the blanket.  
“You warm enough?”  
“Yes. Why?”  
“Sit down. We’ll see in just a minute.”  
Jameson sits down beside him on the blanket and pulls his writing pad out of his pocket, setting it on the earth. Marvin sets his phone down beside it to make sure he can see, but there’s nothing to be said right now. Jameson’s cheeks are rosy from the cold and his soft brown curls sway beneath the beanie Marvin shoved over his ears just earlier.  
“Ready?” murmurs Marvin, feeling the glow in his eyes get even brighter.  
“Feels really weird,” writes JJ. “Should I be scared?”  
“No, it’s okay, it – look, there’s the start of it!”  
Glowing colors in the distance of the sky.  
Jameson gets back to his feet, eyes wide.  
Aurora borealis begins her snaking dance through the sky, flickering over them in a burn of vivid color. Jameson is spell-bound, staring, turning slowly in circles to look as far as he can, surrounded by the eager calls and excited laughter of the campers nearby, and Marvin watches as the glow of silver veins travels up his brother’s body, moving up his neck and filling up his face. A moment later, Jameson turns back to Marvin, and he sees that his little brother’s hair has turned a silky silver, his eyes glowing as blue as the aurora.  
“Fucking shit,” murmurs Marvin, staring back at him. “Jameson. You’re a powerhouse.”  
Jameson shivers distinctly, turning his eyes back to the sky.  
“I wanted you to feel your power more tangibly,” Marvin begins to explain, uncertain now in the face of this much visible magic. “When I was young, it felt so out of control. But I would come up here where the aurora summons all magic to the surface, and suddenly I could feel how it was a part of me… how it belonged to me. Does it feel that way?”  
Jameson looks down at his glowing wrists, turning his hands side to side. Shakily, he nods.  
“Mine,” he signs softly. “Piece of me. But also…”  
He shakes his head and then his hands too, circling them around his skull and closing his eyes in a gesture Marvin takes to mean ‘over-whelmed.’  
“Sit down, okay?” He reaches out to take Jameson’s hand and pulls him back onto the blanket beside him. Jameson shivers, staring up at the sky, and Marvin gives him time to breathe, to process, to collect himself.  
He wraps an arm around Jameson’s shoulders and draws him close, pressing his face against his hair and letting him have his time to shiver. Together, they can feel each other’s magic, cackling like quiet electricity in the closeness between them.  
“It’s not too much, is it?” Marvin whispers.  
Jameson shakes his head. “Need to feel this,” he writes, the pad of paper held between the two of them. He nuzzles close to Marvin’s neck and closes his eyes and for a long time they rest together as the aurora sways between her colors, swimming across the sky like the great mirage of a dragon, glowing in the starlight.  
“Want to try some magic?” asks Marvin.  
Jameson looks up, alarmed.  
“Don’t be scared. Something small. Look here.”  
Marvin points in front of them, where a small cluster of dead brown plants flickers in the wind in front of them. “Flowers. I bet they were alive a few months ago. Can you bring them back?”  
Jameson pauses, licking his lips, before scrawling on his pad. “I’ll try.”  
“That’s all I’m asking.”  
He looks at the flowers.  
And looks.  
And looks.  
And eventually turns back to Marvin, scowling and hiding in his neck again. Marvin laughs.  
“Not easy?”  
“I just don’t know how.”  
“It’s not something that has instructions. It’s… a movement. I don’t know. But hey, you should try writing it down again, yeah? That helped, didn’t it? I always feel like I need to have something to speak out loud. Maybe it focuses it, or makes it real, or something like that.”  
Jameson puts his pen down again. “I want spring to come back to the flowers.”  
They wait, but nothing happens. JJ sighs, thunking his skull back against his brother’s arm. Marvin looks down at him. A few weeks ago, they would never have been touching each other like this.  
He forgave him so easily.  
“I’m glad we’re friends now,” says Marvin, soft, turning his eyes down to the dry earth.  
Jameson smiles up at him, lifting his head. He points at himself. “Me too.”  
Picking up his paper, he adds. “I’d be scared to try this without you.”  
“You don’t really need me, but I’m glad I can be a confidence boost.”  
“In more ways than one,” agrees JJ.  
Marvin cocks his head, chuckling. “What does that mean?”  
JJ shrugs, playing with his pen for a moment.  
“I admire a lot of things about you.”  
“Oh.” He wasn’t expecting that. What is there about him for JJ to admire after how cold he’s been to him? The bitch face, maybe?  
“I’m serious,” adds Jameson, chuckling at the skepticism on his face. “I’ve always thought you were”  
His pen pauses. Marvin waits, shifting on the blanket.  
“You were pretty mean to me. But you were confident. You’re bold. Proud. Not scared to be who you are. I’d like to be more like that. More like you. I’m not always okay with myself.”  
The water of the lake laps gently at the beach in front of them. Marvin frowns, turning his head down.  
“Marvin?” writes Jameson after a moment. “Can I tell you something I’ve never told anyone?”  
Marvin’s frown only deepens, concerned. “Course you can.”  
“I thought about telling Jackie. Or Chase, even. But I mean that, what I said. I really admire”  
His pen falls away again. He closes his eyes.  
“Hey,” murmurs Marvin. “Don’t… don’t cry. I mean, unless you need to, uh. I just mean you don’t have to be upset. You can tell me.”  
“I meant it when I said I wasn’t uncomfortable with you and that man who came to the fighting ring with you but”  
Something in Marvin seems to come to life, something that steadies him completely, something that understands completely, completely, completely. He is touching Jameson’s hand. His little brother seems frozen, eyes closed, biting down hard on his lip.  
“You can tell me,” repeats Marvin, steadier now. Steady as a leaf on the silent lake. “You can tell me.”  
Jameson looks up at him, tears dripping down his cheeks. “I think I’m bisexual.”  
Marvin nods slowly, his mouth quirked into a small smile, though his eyes understand, understand, understand the fear in JJ’s eyes.  
“Is that okay???” Jameson writes.  
“It’s okay,” says Marvin, touching his cheek. “It’s great. It’s great and I’m really proud of you for telling me that.”  
“Marvin, I don’t feel like a man. Men aren’t supposed to feel this way. Or I’m not. I don’t feel normal. I feel perverted when I think about it. I shouldn’t be like this. I would rather be gay, then it would be like I didn’t have a choice, but now it’s as if I’m being tested by someone. Like I have the option to pretend to be straight, like I should just pretend to not like men. But that’s not who I am. That’s not who I am. I wanted it to just go away but it won’t. I will never be straight. I just wanted you to know. I wanted someone to know. I wanted someone to see me for myself before I have to go back to pretending.”  
Marvin is hugging him to his chest before he’s even thought about what he’s doing.  
“Why do you have to go back to pretending?” he murmurs, stroking the back of his head, closing his eyes as Jameson begins to sob, burying his face in Marvin’s shoulder. “Why can’t anyone know?”  
“Not ready,” he manages to scrawl out before falling back into his brother’s chest. “Can’t even admit it to myself half the time.”  
Marvin sighs and closes his eyes, rubbing his back in slow circles, feeling JJ’s magic dancing against his own.  
“This is a journey, okay, I’m not going to pretend it isn’t,” he says. “You have a lot to grapple with, yeah? A lot of internalized shit you got taught. Your background isn’t like the rest of ours. For all we know, you really are right out of 1920, right? It’s a lot. But I get it. Do you know that? I understand. I do.”  
Jameson is stroking Marvin’s name against his neck, practicing his alphabet. M a r v i n. M a r v i n. Maybe to assure himself he’s really here.  
“And there are other people who I bet understand even better,” he adds. “Because you know what, Jamie? Even when you feel alone, when you feel like you’re the only person who’s dealing with this, when you feel like you don’t belong – you are not alone in that. You are not alone in any of this. There are other people out there who get it. There are other people who can be there for you through this. And I – I am always here for you through this. Even if there are parts I didn’t struggle with or can’t relate to, I’m still right here. Listen to me. Listen to me. It’s okay. It’s okay to be bi. It’s okay to be queer. I love you.”  
Jameson chokes on a sob and then laughs, relieved.  
“Okay?” whispers Marvin.  
“Yes,” knocks Jameson, drawing back to look at him, his red eyes earnest and loving and grateful, grateful like birds are grateful for the trees that shelter them, more grateful than Marvin knows he deserves. “Yes.”  
“That’s what I wanted you to say,” he writes, wiping at his face, laughing. “That’s what I always wanted you to say.”  
He buries himself in Marvin’s neck once more. This time he wraps his arms around Marvin’s waist and hugs him close and warm, and Marvin finds himself tugged against his body, held tight and loving, his little brother resting against his body.  
“It’s true,” says Marvin. “I love you.”  
Because there’s been a hundred times in his life when he should have said it and didn’t.  
“I love you and I should have loved you for a lot longer than I have. I love you whoever you’re into. Whoever you end up with. Whatever you want to be. Whether or not you can speak out loud. Okay?”  
Jameson nods, pressed against his chest.  
They don’t talk about it more than that, even though it’s complicated and messy and Jameson still has things he will have to struggle and deal with. Because right now, he doesn’t want Marvin to give him his own version of the “answers” to any of this. He doesn’t want Marvin to pretend to understand every single part of it. He doesn’t want Marvin to make him accept anything exactly the same way Marvin accepted it.  
He just wants to know that Marvin will take him as he really is. Marvin will love him as he really is, whoever that turns out to be, because Jameson, in so many different ways, is still turning out, turning into himself, growing up. Right now, he just wants to be here.  
Pressed against Marvin’s chest.  
Pressed against Marvin’s heart.  
And it is there, above his heart, with his little brother’s hands folded into the sign of it, that Jameson tells him he loves him for the first time.  
Saying it out loud could never have meant more than this moment. Marvin is staring down at him. He feels that there is something alive in him once again.  
You stole another piece of my heart.  
Goddamn. Goddamn.  
You stole another piece of me and I am not angry. I do not regret it.  
“I love you.”  
And Jameson stares up at him with big blue eyes all his own, and gives him a smile that could steal the rest of his heart too.  
The flower on the bank has bloomed again.  
\-----------  
(Later, for meters on every side of the loch, the flowers all bloom, and the grass grows back, and the trees erupt into leaves, soaking in a sudden and inexplicable spring warmth. The other campers on the bank step out of their tents, blinking, astonished, at the growth and sneezing at the pollen in the air. But by then Marvin and Jameson are gone. The magic in their eyes and veins and hair has faded away again, but JJ can still feel that piece of himself burning like a loving flame beneath his skin. He does not fear his magic so much after that, and his strength will only grow. Marvin is the one he will thank for it. Finally, his big brother is teaching him the things he’s always wanted to know and looking at him like he is someone worth loving.)  
\--------------  
Jameson starts to recover. His strength comes back slowly, steadily, aided by his dependable walks and then runs, helping his body come back to itself after weeks of bedrest. His doctors take him off feeding bags and stop prescribing oxygen. He drinks smoothies – anything Chase will blend up for him, really, though Marvin has to call a halt to the experimentation when he finds them drinking waffles and syrup at seven in the morning one day.  
This isn’t Jameson’s story and my English professor always taught me to stay within my psychic distance, so I cannot tell you about every night he goes to his brothers and every night he chooses to struggle alone, crying silent tears over the voice he lost. I cannot tell you about the four weeks he allows himself to mourn before forcing himself to get back up again and I do not know anything about the priest who speaks sign language at the cathedral or the group of Deaf people in Brighton who meet every third Thursday to hang out and eat at a restaurant of their choosing. I do not know if Jameson reads everything he can get his hands on about the history of the deaf and mute and about LGBT+ history while he’s at it, I do not know if he fills Chase’s Youtube suggestions up with signing couples and videos of choirs signing as they sing, and I wish I could tell you I had the energy or the passion to stay up with him through night after night after night of watching BSL videos on repeat, signing along with every word.  
But there are some things both Marvin and I know, and this is what he has so far:  
1\. It has to be hard as fuck, losing your voice like that, and Jameson chooses to deal with a lot of it on his own, so Marvin will not pretend to understand what he goes through, just tries to do what he can. Whatever he can. I love you. As an addendum, related to the first point, inseparable, in fact, from the first point: Jameson Jackson is the most joyful, forgiving, selfless, and brave young person he has ever laid his eyes on.  
2\. Motherfuck. Repeat number two. This kid is seriously, seriously too good for him.  
Honestly, watching him, Marvin’s most common thought is “what the fuck?”  
Because how do you love that hard, hard enough to forget about yourself completely, hard enough to be that patient with Chase when he screws up the fucking alphabet for the fiftieth time while Jameson’s already speaking in full sentences? How does Jameson get over his anger so quickly, how does Jameson get over his grief, how is he making jokes about his voice by the end of the third week? How is he not embarrassed? How is he not cast down?  
Jameson is finding his peace.  
He goes back to the fighting ring.  
(A secret, reader, do not tell Jackie – Marvin goes back to him the first time he wants to return, and they fight doubles, and they kick ass.)  
He gets a punching bag instead of a tree to hit. He watches more movies with Chase until pop culture is starting to make sense to him and he and Chase have most of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off memorized in sign. He smiles at his reflection in the mirror, stoma and all. He goes out in public on his own and uses his pen and pad to speak up for himself. He sneaks a pet hedgehog into the house and thinks that Marvin does not notice. He plants flowers by Henrik’s memorial in the backyard. He paints in the garden. He teaches Marvin to swing dance. He smiles. He smiles. He smiles.  
He’s happy.  
He’s happy.  
I love you. (I forgive you).  
“You know,” says Marvin, trying to be comforting and mature and certain on a morning when they’re sitting together, communicating messily over a blender full of protein smoothie. “It’s okay for you to be upset, JJ. It’s not wrong to be upset about having lost something, especially so soon. I’m glad you’re trying to immerse yourself in all this, but – ”  
“Little point to sad,” answers Jameson, smiling. “Okay to be sad, yes. Right. But me lucky – no depression, no mean family. Family learn with me. Good health in my head. Scared for a couple days. Now better. Looking at happy things, not sad things. Stay happy. Learn new language! So, if I can be happy, why no happy? If it starts to hurt, I’ll cry, sad. Some days, I am sad, I cry, I miss voice. For now, good.”  
For now, good. Marvin laughs, shaking his head. How? How?  
I’m in awe of you, he thinks, watching his little brother take a drink of his smoothie. I’m in awe of you, JJ.  
“Y-U-M,” Jameson tells him, setting down his empty glass with a smile and kissing Marvin’s cheek when he goes to put his cup away.  
Marvin thinks maybe the reason it took him so long to believe it is because he knows he’d be sulking if he was in his position. And yes, it would be okay to be upset, but he knows he’d be taking it out on his brothers, taking it out on himself, fucking around with every guy in his contacts list, dumping out the smoothies he’d have to eat because they don’t taste as good as hamburgers or waffles.  
He’d be a fucking brat. He knows that. He loves being a brat every now and then. All of his brothers chide him a little, but for the most part they just get wrapped around his little finger trying to make him happy again, and he gets to be the center of attention.  
Jameson doesn’t do that. Marvin admires that. Marvin wants to be more like that.  
“Jameson!” he calls, pausing him, and their blue eyes meet. “I – I – ”  
So many things he did to him. So many times he turned him away.  
“I’m sorry it took you losing your voice for me to start treating you better,” he says, and he lifts his head up, and he owns the apology. “I… really, I am. What a shitty story. Jameson, I’m sorry.”  
Jameson smiles again, soft and sweet, and comes to touch his chest, surprising him. His fingers brush over his heart for a minute before he signs.  
“You love Chase when in the hospital,” he says.  
Marvin snorts, a faint blush on his cheeks. “He told you about that, huh?”  
“Soft for Chase,” signs JJ, and Marvin’s pretty sure he’s being teased. “Love.”  
“Yeah,” admits Marvin quietly. “I do.”  
“Chase need you,” says Jameson. “So you help. Love. I need you. So you help. Brother.”  
“Love,” adds Marvin.  
Jameson smiles so big laughter comes bubbling up with it, his eyes shining with tears, and Marvin could shatter beneath a joy like that. No, better yet, Marvin could burn, and not with the angry fires that always seem to eat him up from the inside. Marvin could burn like a star. Could glow. Could light up rooms and lives and planets with a joy like that burning inside him, given to him by his fierce, brave, selfless, sunshine little brother.  
“Love,” Jameson repeats, touching his cheek for a moment, beaming. “Yes. Not always nice brother. Not always easy for you to love. But I need you? Chase needs you? Someone needs you?”  
He brushes his fingers through his dark beard. Marvin closes his eyes for a moment, just to savor it.  
“You’re there. Someone needs you, you’re there. No questions. No pause. You – big secret.”  
“Oh, yeah? What’s that?”  
Jameson hugs him to his chest, pressing their heads together, and Marvin hugs him back. Feels his warm body and his sharp, proud spine. Caresses the curves of his ribs and draws back to look at his face. To look at his eyes. Jameson’s eyes.  
“You really love all of us,” says Jameson. “You love all of us with your whole heart. With your whole self. Your whole being. You’re just too scared to prove it until the stakes are high.”  
Marvin smiles. His eyes are burning. He doesn’t know why.  
“Psychoanalytic little shit,” he growls, and tugs Jameson back into his arms, trying not to laugh.  
No – no.  
What’s the point in trying not to laugh?  
He’s happy. And if he can be happy, why not be happy?  
Jameson squeezes him tight, laughing in his ear, and Marvin hugs him right back, wrapping himself around his waist, and laughs loud enough for the whole house to hear him. His face glows.  
And his phone buzzes.  
Jackie: Marv I’m so sorry  
Jackie: I got into a mess, I got into a big fucking mess and I couldn’t get back to my phone for the longest time  
Jackie: but I found him Marvin  
Jackie: I found him  
Jackie: he’s alive  
Jackie: we’re coming home  
\----------------  
Can I tell you something, reader?  
There are a lot of high stakes after that day.  
Hell, there are stakes higher than moons and stars. He sits for days and days beside Henrik’s hospital bed, weaving spells over him in desperate love, begging him not to die, begging him to come back to himself and recognize that he is safe. There are days when Jackie is bleeding and Jameson is there and Marvin has to trust his big brother’s safety to his youngest, has to trust that Jameson will protect them, has to give up his own will to be the defender and allow the time traveler to shield them. There are days the world feels like it’s ending and all he can do is hold his brothers to his side and make them promises he isn’t sure he believes. There is grief and pain and blood and doubt and fear, and Marvin feels all of it, pounding hard in his breast. Marvin feels so much he’s scared it will kill him, the raw hurt, the terror, the regret and the loneliness. The stakes are high. And when the stakes are high, he can say it – “I love you. I’m here,” or, harder still, “I need you. I need help. I trust you. I’m scared. Please.”  
But something else has started to grow in him, bigger and bigger every day, a desire he has always squashed down like a weed among more dignified plants.  
What use does this pride have? he wonders sometimes. What use is this pride?  
This seclusion?  
The ice that I wear?  
He thinks about his brothers. He remembers. Nights spent on the couch with Henrik when he should have said “I love you” instead of assuming he understood it from the warm silence between them. The sound of Jackie crying and his own lack of an answer. Letting Chase confide everything in him, but never giving anything back. Jameson, slowly picking up a broken plate, patiently enduring his irritation, because that was who Marvin was, and no one expected him to change.  
What was the point of all that?  
Why didn’t he say it? Why didn’t he go to him? Why didn’t he open up? Why didn’t he try to love him sooner?  
What is the point of all this pride?  
Here is the truth, reader: there are many days where the stakes are high after that one.  
But there are even more days where the stakes are not.  
And it’s when Marvin starts to be their brother on those days, those low-stake and quiet summery days, that his whole life starts to glow too.  
\---------------  
“Henrik! Fucker, don’t you dare be walking around on that leg, you know you – ”  
“Marv, six months it’s been! Six months since Jackie brings me back, and still you are worrying!”  
“Well, it’s not my fault you got your stupid leg broken.”  
“Hey!”  
“Haha, kidding, kidding. Hey, where are you going?”  
“To the animal shelter with JJ, you know that!”  
“You are leaving behind the lunch I made you.”  
“Oh! Oh, what? Marvin. Hey, you didn’t have to do that. I’m fine, you know. I can make myself lunch.”  
“I wanted to.”  
“What’s the occasion?”  
“There isn’t one. I just love you.”  
Henrik is smiling. His crystal eyes shine like stars.  
“I love you too,” he says, and means it.  
These are the things that matter.  
“JJ, there you are! Don’t get bit by any more dogs, please.”  
“Dog rescue waits for no man.”  
“Too cryptic of an answer.”  
“I’m kidding! I’ll be careful. Plans for the day?”  
“Oh, uh. Well. Chase and I are getting lunch together because I wanted to talk to him about some stuff, and then I’m going to get dinner with Tommy.”  
“Wait, wait, wait – like a real date?”  
“Yeah. Yeah. I, uh. Finally admitted I really like him.”  
“You’re going to tell us all the details later, right?”  
“Oh, you wish.”  
“Come on, you know you’re going to want to spill everything. You can’t keep your mouth shut to save your life.”  
“Hey! Scat, you little pest, we’ll see!”  
“You are the pest! Pest big brother! Bye! Love you!”  
“Love you too.”  
Jackie’s padding footsteps come down the stairs even as their little brothers race away. Marvin looks up to meet his gaze and smiles at him, pushing a spare mug of coffee towards him, ready and waiting.  
“Thanks,” says Jackie, touched.  
“Sit with me a while.” Marvin pats the couch beside him. Jackie smiles and plops down beside him, and then, before he can say anything, Marvin has squirmed his way under his arm and is pressing against his chest. Jackie laughs and squeezes him close, wrapping his arms tight around him.  
“Everything okay?” asks Jackie, rubbing his shoulder.  
Marvin looks up at him. How grown he seems. It no longer makes Marvin annoyed, though. It makes him proud.  
No, nothing’s wrong. He just wanted to take a moment to sit with him. Him and his brother, sitting in the home that they built for their family. Sitting in the home they protect and love. They brought brothers home to this house. They fought and grew and came back together in this house. They’ve lost things and found them again. And grown as he is, grown and always growing still, Marvin can’t help but think they’re still not so different from the lost young men who first saw each other in the halls of Jack’s apartment, wearing their own masks, though their faces are unhidden now.  
He's spent his whole life being called cold, but irritation is no longer his most reliable emotion. The quiet fires he burns are warm and kept close to his heart. Words are not weapons. You use them to show the people you love that you love them. These are the things that matter, and he refuses to ever again run the risk of being too late to say them.  
“Yes,” says Marvin, putting a hand over his heart and letting Jackie hold him. “Everything is wonderful.”


End file.
